It would seem from the passage above written, as well as from certain others subsequent, that Jerome had little affection for his mother; and albeit he neither chides nor reproaches her, he never refers to her in terms so appreciative and loving as those which he uses in lamenting the death of his harsh and tyrannical father. In the _Geniturarum Exempla_[7] he says that, seeing he is writing of a woman, he will confine his remarks to saying that she was ingenious, of good parts, generous, upright, and loving towards her children. Perhaps the fact that his father died early, while his mother lived on for many years, and was afterwards a member of his household--together with his wife--may account for the colder tone of his remarks while writing about her. She was the widow of a certain Antonio Alberio,[8] and during her marriage had borne him three children, Tommaso, Catilina, and Joanni Ambrogio; but when Jerome was a year old all three of these died of the plague within the space of a few weeks.[9] He himself narrowly escaped death from the same cause, and this attack he attributes to an inherited tendency from his mother, she having suffered from the same disease during her girlhood. There seems to have been born to Fazio and Chiara another son, who died at birth.[10] Jerome Cardan was born on September 24, 1501, between half-past six o'clock and a quarter to seven in the evening. In the second chapter of his autobiography he gives the year as 1500, and in _De Utilitate_, p. 347, he writes the date as September 23, but on all other occasions the date first written is used. Before he saw the light malefic influences were at work against him. His mother, urged on no doubt by the desire to conceal her shame, and persuaded by evil counsellors, drank a potion of abortive drugs in order to produce miscarriage,[11] but Nature on this occasion was not to be baulked. In recording the circumstances of his birth he writes at some length in the jargon of astrology to show how the celestial bodies were leagued together so as to mar him both in body and mind. "Wherefore I ought, according to every rule, to have been born a monster, and, under the circumstances, it was no marvel that it was found necessary to tear me from the womb in order to bring me into the world. Thus was I born, or rather dragged from my mother's body. I was to all outward seeming dead, with my head covered with black curly hair. I was brought round by being plunged in a bath of heated wine, a remedy which might well have proved hurtful to any other infant. My mother lay three whole days in labour, but at last gave birth to me, a living child."[12]