h he records all the
maladies which afflicted him, puts upon the reader's credulity a burden
almost as heavy as is the catalogue given by another philosopher of the
number of authors he mastered before his twelfth year. Two attacks of the
plague, agues, tertian and quotidian, malignant ulcers, hernia,
haemorrhoids, varicose veins, palpitation of the heart, gout, indigestion,
the itch, and foulness of skin. Relief in the second attack of plague came
from a sweat so copious that it soaked the bed and ran in streams down to
the floor; and, in a case of continuous fever, from voiding a hundred and
twenty ounces of urine. As a boy he was a sleep-walker, and he never
became warm below the knees till he had been in bed six hours, a
circumstance which led his mother to predict that his time on earth would
be brief.

Cardan lived an abstemious life. He broke his fast on bread-and-water and
a few grapes. He sometimes dined off bread, the yolk of an egg, and a
little wine, and would take for supper a mess of beetroot and rice and a
chicory salad. The catalogue of his favourite dishes seems to exhaust
every known edible, and it will suffice to remark that he was specially
inclined to sound and well-stewed wild boar, the wings of young cockerels
and the livers of pullets, oysters, mussels, fresh-water crayfish because
his mother ate greedily thereof when she was pregnant with him; but of all
dishes he rates the best a carp from three pounds weight to seven, taken
from a good feeding-ground. He praises all sweet fruit, oil, olives, and
finds in rue an antidote to poison. Ten o'clock was his hour for going to
bed, and he allowed himself eight hours' sleep. When wakeful he would walk
about the room and repeat the multiplication table. As a further remedy
for sleeplessness he would reduce his food by half, and would anoint his
thighs, the soles of his feet, the neck, the elbows, the carpal bones, the
temples, the jugulars, the region of the heart and of the liver, and the
upper lip with ointment of poplars, or the fat of bear, or the oil of
water-lilies.

These few extracts will show that an intelligible narrative could scarcely
be produced by the methods Cardan used. The book is a collection of facts,
classified as a scientific writer would arrange the sections and
subsections of his subject. In gathering together and grouping the leading
points of his life, a method somewhat similar to his own will suffice, but
there will be no need