from pursuing the supreme aim of his life, that is, eminence in the
art of Medicine. In his youth the threats and persuasions of his father
could not induce him to take up Jurisprudence with an assured income and
abandon Medicine. At Sacco, at Gallarate, and afterwards in Milan he was
forced by the necessity of bread-winning to use his pen in all sorts of
minor subjects that had no real fascination for him, but all his leisure
was devoted to the acquisition of Medical knowledge. Prudence as well as
inclination had a share in directing his energies into this channel, for a
report, for which no doubt there was some warrant, was spread abroad that
what skill he had lay entirely in the knowledge of Astrology; and, as this
rumour operated greatly to his prejudice,[261] he resolved to perfect
himself in Medicine and free his reputation from this aspersion. He had
quarrelled violently with the physicians over the case of Count Borromeo's
child which died, and with Borromeo himself, and, almost immediately after
this, he published his book, _De Astrorum Judiciis_, a step which tended
to identify him yet more closely with Astrology, and to raise a cry
against him in Milan, which he declares to be the most scandal-mongering
city in the Universe. But it is clear that in this instance scandal was
not far wrong, and that Cardan himself was right in purging himself of the
quasi science he ought never to have taken up.

Medicine, when Cardan began his studies, was beginning to feel the effects
of the revival of Greek learning. With the restored knowledge of the
language of Greece there arose a desire to investigate the storehouses of
science, as well as those of literature, and the extravagant assumption
of the dogmatists, and the eccentricities of the Arabic school gave
additional cogency to the cry for more light. The sects which Galen had
endeavoured to unite sprang into new activity within a century after his
death. The Arabian physicians, acute and curious as they were, had
exercised but a very transient influence upon the real progress of the
art, the chief cause of their non-success being their adhesion to
arbitrary and empirical tradition. At the end of the fifteenth century,
Leonicinus, a professor at Ferrara, recalled the allegiance of his pupils
to the authority of Hippocrates by the ability and eloquence of his
teaching; and, by his translation of Galen's works into Latin, he helped
still farther to confirm the ascendency of