BDSL,1- Transgressive maths depictions in literature

[Michael Bailey]

> Long preceding tendril, but things got really interesting
> around, natch, the end of the Counter-Reformation, in
> Italy, with the priority dispute between Niccolò Fontana
> Tartaglia and Gerolamo Cardano. The story of Nick,
> known as "the stammerer", reads like something right
> out of "The Courier's Tragedy"
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_Fontana_Tartaglia
>
> He was definitely passed over. Cardano, stole the glory.
>

but with a name like Tartaglia, it also reads like the Godfather...
(a tale refracted in _Vineland_ to great humorous effect)

Wikipedia's version is rather brief.  I have sitting in my lap a copy
of Dr Hugh Riordan(RIP)'s _Medical Mavericks_ vol 2

It is written in true potboiler style, and (I hasten to note) is not
devoid of typos and errors of fact even to my rather uncritical
(because I like medical mavericks, and Dr Riordan himself was one) and
certainly not fully educated eye...

however, his tale is more sympathetic to Cardano (perhaps partly
because said fellow was also a medical maverick)

"Gerolamo Cardano (1501-1576), illegitimate son to Chiaro Alberio and
Fazio Cardano, learned to fend for himself early in life....cast
numerous horoscopes for willing buyers.  His skill at dice also won
him much needed money because he was able to calculate his risks.  In
fact, his study of the subject led to the laws of probability as we
know them today.  [no footnote for this, though] He was soon
recognized as a brilliant young man.  But Cardano had a laconic,
caustic manner that made him many enemies....ill-wishers...read his
criticism of traditional medicine in _On the Differing Opinions of
Physicians_.... [and blocked patronage.  He was forced to move from
town to town]...his wife miscarrying with each move...

"...finally...was employed as a ghostwriter by a young nobelman [sic],
Filippo Archinto....These years of wandering...[had] affected
Cardano's behavior.  He gave the impression of having an unbalanced
mind with his self-pitying outpourings to anyone who would
listen....But in Gallarate the clean mountain air and the distance
from his enemies cleared his thinking....

"Unfortunately he rewrote and republished his previous controversial
work under the new title, _The Bad Practice of Healing Among Modern
Doctors_.  In this book, he pointed out many practices he called
medical errors - "the result of the tribal insecurities of men who
banded themselves together and showed the world a surface of pomp and
learning that satisfactorily concealed from the beholders the depth of
ignorance beneath." [and for this quotation Dr Riordan does offer a
footnote] But he did not proofread and edit the manuscript so that it
was published with all its grammatical and factual errors, which gave
offended doctors the means to attack him vehemently....

"...Cardano was especially famous for his cure for tuberculosis - a
disease that no other doctor could heal.  Cardano established the idea
of the sanatorium; he ordered clean country air, plenty of rest, a
nourishing diet, and simple, undemanding interests.

[Riordan claims Cardano worked out Tartaglia's cubic equation himself
(though Wikipedia claims otherwise)] "....and published it in _The
Practice of Arithmetic and Simple Mensuration_, although he gave
Tartaglia credit....[Tartaglia was furious and determined to get
revenge]

[Terrible family troubles] "His daughter Chiara, a licentious young
woman, became pregnant with her brother's child.  She aborted the
child, but in doing so ruined her chances to have other children.  For
this reason, after an unwise marriage, she was divorced.  Chiara later
died in an asylum, insane and paralyzed from syphilis.  Cardano's
eldest son, Giovanni, became constantly involved in crime.  When he
was blackmailed into marrying a young woman, he poisoned her and was
consequently tortured and executed.  Cardano's youngest son, Aldo, a
vicious and cruel man, became a torturer for the Inquisition after
spending several years in and out of prison for his violence.

[Tartaglia kept a notebook, and eventually used his influence to have
Cardano called before the Inquisition, but an Archbishop Hamilton in
Edinburgh of whose asthma Cardano had made a house call (from Milan)
to effect a cure ("stop using feather mattresses" - pretty good, eh?),
came to Cardano's defense and gained his release.]

"....His last manuscript was _De Propria Cita_, the first medical
autobiography to be written.  Overall, Cardano published 131 works,
burned 171 manuscripts he considered worthless, and kept 111 other
books in manuscript.

So in Dr Riordan's version, Cardano comes off as Mozart to Tartaglia's Salieri.

Still, none of Tartaglia's overreactions would've occurred had Cardano
been discreet as requested...