Jerome Cardan | Page 3

William George Waters
drugs in order to produce miscarriage,[11] but Nature on this
occasion was not to be baulked. In recording the circumstances of his
birth he writes at some length in the jargon of astrology to show how
the celestial bodies were leagued together so as to mar him both in
body and mind. "Wherefore I ought, according to every rule, to have
been born a monster, and, under the circumstances, it was no marvel
that it was found necessary to tear me from the womb in order to bring
me into the world. Thus was I born, or rather dragged from my
mother's body. I was to all outward seeming dead, with my head
covered with black curly hair. I was brought round by being plunged in
a bath of heated wine, a remedy which might well have proved hurtful
to any other infant. My mother lay three whole days in labour, but at
last gave birth to me, a living child."[12]
The sinister influences of the stars soon began to manifest their power.
Before Jerome had been many days in the world the woman into whose
charge he had been given was seized with the plague and died the same
day, whereupon his mother took him home with her. The first of his
bodily ailments,--the catalogue of the same which he subsequently

gives is indeed a portentous one,[13]--was an eruption of carbuncles on
the face in the form of a cross, one of the sores being set on the tip of
the nose; and when these disappeared, swellings came. Before the boy
was two months old his godfather, Isidore di Resta of Ticino, gave him
into the care of another nurse who lived at Moirago, a town about seven
miles from Milan, but here again ill fortune attended him. His body
began to waste and his stomach to swell because the nurse who gave
him suck was herself pregnant.[14] A third foster-mother was found for
him, and he remained with her till he was weaned in his third year.
When he was four years of age he was taken to Milan to be under the
care of his mother, who, with her sister, Margarita, was living in Fazio's
house; but whether she was at this time legally married to him or not
there is no evidence to show. In recording this change he remarks that
he now came under a gentler discipline from the hands of his mother
and his aunt, but immediately afterwards proclaims his belief that the
last-named must have been born without a gall bladder, a remark
somewhat difficult to apply, seeing he frequently complains afterwards
of her harshness. It must be remembered, however, that these details
are taken from a record of the writer's fifth year set down when he was
past seventy.[15] He quotes certain lapses from kindly usage, as for
instance when it happened that he was beaten by his father or his
mother without a cause. After much chastisement he always fell sick,
and lay some time in mortal danger. "When I was seven years old my
father and my mother were then living apart--my kinsfolk determined,
for some reason or other, to give over beating me, though perchance a
touch of the whip might then have done me no harm. But ill-fortune
was ever hovering around me; she let my tribulation take a different
shape, but she did not remove it. My father, having hired a house, took
me and my mother and my aunt to live with him, and made me always
accompany him in his rounds about the city. On this account I, being
taken at this tender age with my weak body from a life of absolute rest
and put to hard and constant work, was seized at the beginning of my
eighth year with dysentery and fever, an ailment which was at that time
epidemic in our city. Moreover I had eaten by stealth a vast quantity of
sour grapes. But after I had been visited by the physicians, Bernabo
della Croce and Angelo Gyra, there seemed to be some hope of my

recovery, albeit both my parents, and my aunt as well, had already
bewept me as one dead.
"At this season my father, who was at heart a man of piety, was minded
to invoke the divine assistance of San Girolamo (commending me to
the care of the Saint in his prayers) rather than trust to the working of
that familiar spirit which, as he was wont to declare openly, was
constantly in attendance upon him. The reason of this change in his
treatment of me I never cared to inquire. It was during the time of my
recovery from this sickness, that the French celebrated their triumph
after defeating the Venetians on the banks of the Adda,
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