rs
problems, too deep for his own powers of solution, which Gian Battista
would assuredly have mastered in the course of time. He does not forget to
notice certain of the young man's failings; for he remarks that he was
temperate of speech, except when he was angered, and then he would pour
forth such a torrent of words that he scarce seemed in his right mind.
Cardan professes to have discerned a cause for these failings, and the
calamities flowing therefrom, in the fact that Gian Battista had the third
and fourth toes of his right foot united by a membrane; he declares that,
if he had known of this in time, he would have counteracted the evil by
dividing the toes.[116] Gian Battista eventually gained the _baccalaureat_
in his twenty-second year, and two years after became a member of the
College.

The life which Cardan planned to lead at Pavia was unquestionably a full
one. He had several young men under his care as pupils besides his son,
amongst them being a kinsman of his, Gasparo Cardano, a youth of sterling
virtue and a useful coadjutor in times to come. He was at this time
engaged on his most important works in Medicine and Physical Science. He
worked hard at his profession, practising occasionally and reading
voraciously all books bearing on his studies. He wrote and published
several small works during the four years--from 1547 to 1551--of his
Professorship at Pavia; the most noteworthy of which were the Book of
Precepts for the guidance of his children, and some Treatises on the
Preservation of Health. He also wrote a book on Physiognomy, or as he
called it Metoposcopy, an abstract of which appears as a chapter in _De
Utilitate_ (lib. iii. c. 10), but the major part of his time must have
been consumed in collecting and reducing to form the huge mass of facts
out of which his two great works, _De Subtilitate_ and _De Varietate
Rerum_, were built up.

A mere abstract of the contents of these wonderful books would fill many
pages, and prove as uninteresting and unsuggestive as abstracts must
always be; and a commentary upon the same, honestly executed, would make a
heavy draft on the working life-time of an industrious student. In
reference to each book the author has left a statement of the reasons
which impelled him to undertake his task, the most cogent of which were
certain dreams.[117] Soon after he had begun to write the _De Astrorum
Judiciis_ he dreamt one night that his soul, freed from his body, was
ra