20 September 1552

"EXTRA EXTRA READ ALL ABOUT IT..." It was just like any other normal weekday. Work had ended and I was making my way to the news stand before arriving at my favorite tea shop. "GEROLAMO CARDANO DOES THE UNTHINKABLE, SAVES THE LIFE OF JOHN HAMILTON, ARCHBISHOP OF ST. ANDREWS!" My ears matched my posture as I perked up because I thought that he said the name of an old friend. "Hey again boy," I gave him a euro and took a paper and did not even wait for my change because what I thought was true, the headline article was about the same man that I met at the casino and ran into at the bar 13 years ago and had not heard from or seen since. I did not even order my tea, I walked in, sat down as the first open table, and began to read. "For the past ten years, John Hamilton, Archbishop of St. Andrews, had been suffering from asthma, but as of recently, the amount of attacks as well as the toll being taken on his body had increased. Hamilton brought in the court physicians from the French King as well as the German emperor in the previous two years, but they failed in their diagnosis and treatment. Near death and out of disparity, the Archbishop contacted a Gerolamo Cardano, resident of Milan and rector of the College of Physicians and known as "the greatest physician in the world!" Cardano was not known to leave Italy as he focused most of his attention on his lectures on medicine at the Universities of Milan and Pavia in the years of 1543 till 1552. Hamilton seemed to catch him at just the right time, though, as he was in-between semesters and had no preparation for lectures that needed to be done (not to mention the fact that he was offered a large sum of money). Cardano arrived in Edinburgh on the 29th of June and began his work on his patient immediately. During his time there, Cardano diagnosed Hamilton with a disease called feather pillows and named that the cause of his asthma. Even though Cardano was given two thousand gold crowns, he turned down an offer for a permanent place at the Scottish court and returned to his home 1 week ago. His arrival home was indication that the Archbishop was recovering, in a stable state, and on his was to being healthy once again, something that seemed impossible to most. As if Cardano wasn't already on top of the world, right? In 1545, this gentleman published what is known to be the greatest mathematical works of its time, Ars Magna. This publication included the methods of solving the cubic and quartic equations, including the mystery of solving the formula when taking the square root of a negative number was involved. As he writes in his publication "Dismissing mental tortures, and multiplying (5 + √ - 15) by (5 - √-15), we obtain 25 - (-15). Therefore the product is 40. .... and thus far does arithmetical subtlety go, of which this, the extreme, is, as I have said, so subtle that it is useless." So not only does the resume of Cardano have the titles of world renowned mathematician and physician and established professor of medicine at the University of Pavia, but now has lifesaver of the Archbishop. The only dilemma for Cardano now is in which order those will be listed." I was speechless.

Sources:
- O'Connor, J J, and E F Robertson. “Girolamo Cardano.” Cardan Biography, School of Mathematics and Statistics University of St Andrews, Scotland, June 1998, www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Cardan.html.
- Boyd, Andy, and John H. Lienhard. “Engines Of Our Ingenuity.” No. 1950: Girolamo Cardano, University of Houston, 1988, uh.edu/engines/epi1950.htm.
- C Romo Santos, Cardano's 'Ars magna' and the solutions of cubic and quartic equations, Rev. Acad. Canaria Cienc. 7 (1) (1995), 187-201.

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