Cardano, after graduating in medicine, attempts to be admitted to the medical college but is flatly rejected. This is perhaps understandable, given that his book “On the Divergent Opinions of Physicians” had practically branded them a pack of charlatans. Cardano then turns to magicians to overcome his misfortune. They advise him to protect himself from the moon’s rays, to sneeze three times upon awakening, and to rap his knuckles on wood. This doesn’t improve his situation (obviously), so he returns to playing dice to make money, applying the statistical laws he himself expounded in his book “Liber de ludo alea” (The Book of Dice), which hadn’t sold much, but since he was now using it to make a living, he wasn’t so sorry.
