icians was what kept me out of the College,
and not the circumstances of my birth. He told the whole story to the
Senate, and brought such influence to bear upon the Governor of the
Province and other men of worship, that at last the entrance to the
College was opened to me."

Up to the time of his admission to the College, Jerome had never felt that
he could depend entirely upon medicine for his livelihood. He now
determined to publish his _Practica Arithmeticae_, the book which he had
prepared _pari passu_ with the ill-starred _De Malo Medendi_. It seems to
have been thoroughly revised and corrected, and was finally published in
1539, in Milan; Cardan only received ten crowns for his work, but the
sudden fame he achieved as a mathematician ought to have set him on firm
ground. His friends were still working to secure for him benefits yet more
substantial. Alfonso d'Avalos, Francesco della Croce, the jurisconsult
whose name has already been mentioned, and the senator Sfondrato, were
doing their best to bring the physicians of the city into a more
reasonable temper, and they finally succeeded in 1539; when, after having
been denied admission for twelve years, Jerome Cardan became a member of
the College, and a sharer in all the privileges appertaining thereto.

Though Cardan was now a fully qualified physician, he spent his time for
the next year or two rather with letters than with medicine. He worked
hard at Greek, and as the result of his studies published somewhat
prematurely a treatise, _De Immortalitate Animorum_, a collection of
extracts from Greek writers which Julius Caesar Scaliger with justice
calls a confused farrago of other men's learning.[76] He published also
about this period the treatise on Judicial Astrology, and the Essay _De
Consolatione_, the only one of his books which has been found worthy of an
English translation.[77] In 1541 he became Rector of the College of
Physicians, but there is no record of any increase in the number of his
patients by reason of this superadded dignity. A passage in the _De Vita
Propria_, written with even more than his usual brutal candour, gives a
graphic view of his manner of life at this period. "It was in the summer
of the year 1543, a time when it was my custom to go every day to the
house of Antonio Vicomercato, a gentleman of the city, and to play chess
with him from morning till night. As we were wont to play for one real, or
even three or four, on each game, I,