JEROME CARDAN 251 



the most interesting book he has left behind him, is 

 certainly the most clumsy and chaotic from a literary 

 point of view. The chapters for the most part begin 

 with his early years, and end with some detail as to his 

 life in Rome, each one being a categorical survey of a 

 certain side of his life ; but remarks as to his personal 

 peculiarities are scattered about from beginning to end. 

 He tells how he could always see the moon in broad 

 daylight ; 1 of his passion for wandering about the city 

 by night carrying arms forbidden by the law ; of his 

 practice of self-torture, beating his legs with a switch, 

 twisting his fingers, pinching his flesh, and biting his 

 left arm ; and of going about within doors with naked 

 legs ; how at one time he was possessed with the desire, 

 heroica passio, of suicide ; of his habit of filling his house 

 with pets of all sorts kids, lambs, hares, rabbits, and 

 storks. The chapter in which he records all the maladies 

 which afflicted him, puts upon the reader's credulity a 

 burden almost as heavy as is the catalogue given by 

 another philosopher of the number of authors he mastered 

 before his twelfth year. Two attacks of the plague, 

 agues, tertian and quotidian, malignant ulcers, hernia, 

 haemorrhoids, varicose veins, palpitation of the heart, 

 gout, indigestion, the itch, and foulness of skin. Relief 

 in the second attack of plague came from a sweat so 

 copious that it soaked the bed and ran in streams down 

 to the floor ; and, in a case of continuous fever, from 

 voiding a hundred and twenty ounces of urine. As a 

 boy he was a sleep-walker, and he never became warm 

 below the knees till he had been in bed six hours, a cir- 

 cumstance which led his mother to predict that his time 

 on earth would be brief. 



Cardan lived an abstemious life. He broke his fast 

 1 De Vita Propriety ch. xxxvii. p. 115. 



