those that belong to the Emperor ...

[ded_maxim]

There are seven principal genera of things: air, sleep, exercise, food, drink, medication, and preservative.
There are fifteen species: air, sleep, exercise, bread, meat, milk, eggs, fish, oil, salt, water, figs, bitter-rue, grapes, and strong onions.
Preparatives are also fifteen: fire, ashes, the bath, water, the stew-pan, the frying-pan, the spit, the gridiron, the pestle, the blade of the knife and back of it, the grater, parsley, rosemary, and laurel.

(Girolamo Cardano, The Book of My Life, Ch. 8, "Manner of Life")

Comments

[kovrov.livejournal.com]

Any idea what he meant?

[ded-maxim.livejournal.com]

I think he was trying to classify, at the most general level, the salient features of his way of living. In that chapter he gets very detailed about what he likes to eat and drink, how he likes it to be prepared, what sorts of exercises he does, etc. The way I see it, this is Cardano's attempt at self-examination.