ABSTRACT
The great exponent of metoposcopy was Jerome Cardan, a polymath whose many activities included medicine, astronomy, mathematics, astrology and the occult arts. He was born in 1500, the illegitimate son of a Milanese scholar who was both a doctor in medicine and law and also a competent mathematician. Jerome’s education was rather irregular but, among other subjects, he studied medicine as well as mathematics and music and received an MD degree from Padua in 1526. He was an inveterate gambler, obstinate and cantankerous, and made many enemies. However, although his life was full of misfortune, he achieved great fame as an astrologer as well as a physician and travelled to Paris, London and Edinburgh to practice astrology and medicine. It was in London in 1552 that he cast the horoscope of King Edward VI, the son and successor of King Henry VIII. Cardan’s predictions, though, were abysmally wrong and he foretold that Edward would live at least until his 55th birthday and then suffer from various diseases. In fact, he died in 1553 before reaching his 17th birthday. The excuse by Cardan, given in King (1973), is:
It was unsafe to pronounce upon the term of life in weak nativities, unless all processes, and ingresses, and external movement that from month to month and year to year affect the ruling planets had been carefully inquired into. But to make such a calculation would have cost him, he said, not less than a hundred hours.
