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Updated: June 18, 2025
In 1550 there came another break in Cardan's life as Professor at Pavia, the reason being the usual one of dearth of funds. In 1551 he went back for a short time, but the storms of war were rising on all sides, and the luckless city of Pavia was in the very centre of the disturbance.
Cardan in his narrative speaks of Edinburgh as the place where he met his patient, and does not mention any other place of sojourn, but the record just quoted goes on to say that he abode with the Primate for eleven weeks at his country residence at Monimail, near Cupar, Fife, where there is a well called to this day Cardan's Well.
Public and private calamity fell upon the Duca di Sessa, the Governor of Milan, doubtless because he had allowed the law to take its course. Indeed every person great or small who had been concerned in Gian Battista's condemnation, was, by Cardan's showing, overtaken by grave misfortune.
Assuredly in Philosophy, in Metaphysics, in History, in Politics, in Morals, as well as in the more abstruse fields of learning, nothing that was worth consideration escaped his notice." The foregoing eulogy from the pen of an adverse critic gives eloquent testimony to Cardan's industry and the catholicity of his knowledge.
Cardan's worldly fortunes were now at their lowest ebb. Burdened with a wife and child, he had found it necessary to return, after a second futile attempt to gain a living by his calling in a country town, to Milan, his "stony-hearted step-mother."
The De Subtilitate and the De Varietate are standing proofs that Cardan did not overstrain his powers by exertion of this kind. Leaving out of the reckoning his mathematical treatises, the vogue enjoyed by Cardan's published works must have been a short one. They came to the birth only to be buried in the yawning graves which lie open in every library.
He ends with further abuse of Cardan's Practice of Arithmetic, which he declares to be merely a confused farrago of other men's knowledge, and with a remark which he probably intended to be a crowning insult.
In 1550 Cardan was called in to see a certain woman who had long been troubled with an obscure disease of the bladder. Every known remedy was tried in vain, when one day a certain Josephus Niger, a distinguished Greek scholar, went to see the patient. Niger, according to Cardan's account, was quite ignorant of medicine, but he was reputed to be a skilled master of magic arts.
There is a charming life by Henry Morley, of Cardan, the great Italian physician and algebraist, which gives us in accurate detail the daily routine of a doctor's days in the sixteenth century. In it is an account of Cardan's professional visit in 1551 to John Hamilton, archbishop of St. Andrew's, Scotland, and practically the ruler of that turbulent realm.
Alfonso d'Avalos, Cardan's friend and patron, was at this time the Governor of Milan. D'Avalos was a man of science, as well as a soldier, and Cardan had already sent to him a copy of Tartaglia's treatise on Artillery, deeming that a work of this kind would not fail to interest him.
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