JEROME CARDAN 265 



imagination which was specially prone to seize upon 

 some figment of the brain, and some imperfectly ap- 

 prehended sensation of the optic nerve, and fashion from 

 these materials a tale of marvel. Delusions of this sort 

 were common in reputed witches, as Reginald Scot 

 writes "They learne strange toongs with small in- 

 dustrie (as Aristotle and others affirme)." 1 The other 

 charge preferred by Naud as to the pretended cure of 

 consumption, and the consequent quibbling and ter- 

 giversation, is a more valid one. It has been noted how 

 Cardan, previous to his journey to Scotland, had posed 

 as the discoverer of a cure for this malady. In the list 

 of his cures successfully treated he includes several in 

 which he restored patients suffering from blood-spitting, 

 fever, and extreme emaciation to sound health, the most 

 noteworthy of these being that of Girolamo Tiboldo, a 

 sea-captain. When the sick man had risen from his 

 bed and had become fat and healthy, Cardan deemed 

 that the occasion justified a certain amount of self- 

 gratulation, but the physicians, out of envy, de- 

 clared that Tiboldo had never suffered from true phthi- 

 sis. In his account of the case Cardan says that he, and 

 the physicians as well, were indeed untruthful over the 

 matter, his own falsehood having been the result of over- 

 sanguine hope, and theirs the outcome of spiteful envy. 

 Tiboldo died after all of chest disease, but not till 

 five years later, and then from a chill caught through 

 sitting in wet garments. 2 The term consumption has 

 always been applied somewhat loosely, and Cardan 

 probably would have been allowed the benefit of this 



1 Discoverie of Witchcraft, ch. xi. 



2 Donato Lanza, the druggist, who had been his first introducer 

 to Sfondrato, was equally perverse. After Cardan had cured him 

 of phthisis, he jumped out of a window to avoid arrest, and fell 

 into a fish-pond, and died of the cold he took. Opera, torn. i. p. 83, 



