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Updated: June 7, 2025
Morley, 'Life of Cardan. Berti, 'Vita di Giordano Bruno. Bartholmess, 'Vie de Jordano Bruno. Muir's 'Life of Mahomet. Stanley's 'Life of Arnold. Mazzuchelli, 'Vita di Archimede. Blot's 'Life of Newton. Drinkwater's 'Kepler and Galileo.
The work upon which Cardan founded his chief hope of immortality was his Commentary on Hippocrates. In bulk it ranks first easily, filling as it does one of the large folios of the edition of 1663.
If Naudé indeed set to work with the intention of drawing a figure of Cardan which should stand out a sinister apparition in the eyes of posterity, his task was an easy one. All he had to do was to place Jerome Cardan himself in the witness-box.
Montucla, Histoire de Math. i. 596, gives a full account of Ferrari's process. In the De Vita Propria, Cardan dismisses the matter briefly: "Ex hoc ad artem magnam, quam collegi, dum Jo. Colla certaret nobiscum, et Tartalea,
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.
It is only remembered because Cardan has inserted therein, somewhat incongruously, that account of his asserted cures of phthisis which Cassanate quoted when he wrote to Cardan about Archbishop Hamilton's asthma, and which were afterwards seized upon by hostile critics as evidence of his disregard of truth.
Sylvius was an old man of a jocular nature, but as an anatomist bitterly opposed to the novel methods of Vesalius, who was one of Cardan's heroes. With this possibility of quarrelling over the merits of Vesalius, it speaks well for the temper of the doctors that they parted on good terms. Ranconet, another Parisian who welcomed Cardan heartily, was one of the Presidents of the Parliament of Paris.
After giving this account of his person, Cardan writes down a catalogue of the various diseases which vexed him from time to time, a chapter of autobiography which looks like a transcript from a dictionary of Nosology. More interesting is the sketch which he makes of his mental state during these early years.
He traced it to the Commentaries of Cardan, an astrologer, not a very trustworthy authority, who had himself heard it, he said, from "an unknown Bishop of Lexovia."
With a mind thus attuned it is no matter of surprise that Naudé should have been led to speak somewhat severely when called upon to give judgment on a man saturated as Cardan was with the belief in sorcery, witches, and attendant demons.
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