Medicine in the 17th century through the books of the Casanatense Library
[from the preface by Prof. Luciana Rita Angeletti to the Catalogue of the Exhibition of the same name]
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Seventeenth-century medicine had a status of great uncertainty. Epistemological uncertainty: still on the difficult ridge between ‘art’ and ‘science’, medicine could seem a knowledge that was in many ways backward, if compared with the spectacular contemporary successes – not only theoretical, but also observational and experimental – of mechanics, astronomy, and natural sciences. Practical uncertainty: almost no one, among doctors and patients, had excessive illusions about the real effectiveness of treatments, still in many ways similar to those handed down in the many ‘books of secrets’ that the Renaissance had inherited from antiquity and the Middle Ages. Uncertainty of the didactic model: throughout the century, debates dragged on, progressively more tired, but always capable of igniting passions, between ‘moderns’ and ‘ancients’, Galenists and novatores, a very large group, in which mechanists and chemists recognized themselves – in other respects on opposing sides – some anatomists and physiologists, but also ambiguous characters, alchemists and charlatans. […]
The Galenists maintained control over the Studies almost everywhere, and for a longer time than one might have expected, given the progressive discredit of the humoral theory. But the impossibility of replacing the clarity and didactic effectiveness of the ‘Galenic’ scheme – the fruit of centuries of development and the contribution of ancient medicine, Arab medicine, and Renaissance developments – with an alternative scheme made the diffusion of the new theories problematic. The work of some doctors even shows in their titles the coexistence of traditional elements and attempts at innovation. Commentaries on Galen were printed and reprinted during the century, in Italy (in Naples: Simone Acampo; but also in Padua, Bologna, Rome) and outside Italy (in Lyon, Paris, Amsterdam, Geneva). Many works contained collections of flores or sententiae taken from the texts of Greek, Roman, and Arab doctors. At least partially different is the case of the other great name of ancient medicine, Hippocrates (as is known, the corpus hippocraticum includes treatises from different periods, from the classical Greek era to the Alexandrian age). Hippocratism actually experienced a revival that then reached its peak in the eighteenth century, when ‘natural’ medicine, focused on the regime, on interest in the environment and on the prevention of pathologies, had great fortune in the Enlightenment and early Romanticism. The works, also included in this catalogue, by Johann Ludwig Hannemann bear witness to this beginning of a medicine that wanted to be ‘natural’. Many editions and commentaries of Hippocratic treatises were printed, in non-academic circles, as a partial counterpoint to Galenism. Nor were there any shortage of editions of the great Arab physicians, especially Avicenna. Throughout the century, moreover, the works of the great sixteenth-century physicians continued to be published, from Prospero Alpini to Giovanni Argenterio, from Jacopo Berengario to Girolamo Cardano. In the first part of the century, traditional medicine, not yet shaken by the scientific revolution, continued with the usual writing of texts: an example of this is the production, widely represented here, of the Swiss doctor Gaspar Bauhin, who wrote works on the Bezoar stone, commentaries on Hippocrates, Aristotle, Galen, a series of anatomical works and a work on mineral waters and their therapeutic use; or of the Spaniard Gaspar Bravo de Sobremonte.
The great development of experimental sciences was not without repercussions on medicine, however, especially in the second half of the century. Some thinkers – such as Tommaso Campanella, author of Medicinalium libri, present in the catalogue – had already questioned the Aristotelian-Galenic theoretical framework. The affirmation of the experimental method, which in Italy is linked to the name of Galileo Galilei and his school, and for medicine to the name of the Paduan Santorio Santorio, gave impetus to a ‘new’ medicine and above all to a ‘new’ anatomy, which was able to make use of instruments and techniques already tested in other fields. The use of the microscope is linked to innovative research and results, by Marcello Malpighi on comparative anatomy, by Niccolò Stenone on the structure and motion of muscles (the studies of the Englishman John Browne were also very important on this topic), by Lorenzo Bellini on urine, by Giorgio Baglivi on motor fibre. Some texts, such as Daniello Bartoli’s 1679 book On the Sound of Harmonic Tremors and Hearing, combine new physical knowledge with the attempt to innovate simultaneously in areas of anatomy and physiology. More problematic is the application, which was attempted, of the mathematical-geometric method in the medical, anatomical and pathological fields. Iatromechanics, the reduction of the living body – and its possible dysfunctions – to a machine that could be analyzed in terms of motions and falls, levers and weights, gravity and fluid dynamics, was not successful. The major work of Italian iatromechanics, Giovanni Alfonso Borelli’s De motu animalium (Rome 1681), used chemistry to explain the motion of bodies and life itself.
Anatomy made great progress during the century. One of the areas in which research was liveliest, starting from the revolutionary Harveyian discovery of blood circulation, was that of the heart and blood vessels: but investigations on the heart were not lacking in traditional medicine, in which disputes were still alive about the location (heart or brain) of the soul and its faculties. Many were the treatises de corde in the production of the second half of the century: Jacobus de Back, Thomas Bartholin, the Englishman John Beck. 
The discovery of lymphatic circulation, which occurred in the first half of the century, was the work of the Italian Gaspare Aselli. The mechanism of nutrition, and more generally the question of metabolism, were another privileged field of investigation: from Giulio Cesare Baricelli’s study on sweat, to the work, already mentioned, of Santorio Santorio, to the countless texts dedicated to the mechanism of nutrition. The other great sector of development of medical theory (not yet practice) during the century was what can be defined with a term now fallen into disuse as ‘generation’: a set of different themes, which ranged from theories on the development of the fetus to the debate on the role and respective importance of the male seed and the egg in the constitution of the embryo (works by Louis Barles on the anatomy and the male and female reproductive system, by Caspar Bartholin on the ovaries). In this sector too, the Englishman William Harvey was a pioneer, and as a supporter of the omni ex ovo principle a declared enemy of those who still supported the possibility of spontaneous generation. General studies were dedicated to anatomy, large-format volumes full of plates, such as the text by Govard Bidloo (Anatomia humanis corporis) reprinted several times. In the second half of the century, the new discoveries of ‘subtle’ anatomy materialized in the creation of new anatomical and medical systems, such as that of the German Johannes Bohn, or that of Pierre Borel, inspired by Cartesian natural philosophy.
Despite the great 
importance attributed to the study of cerebral and nervous mechanisms (the greatest European progress in this sector is to be attributed to the studies, soon spread also in Italy, of the Englishman John Willis), mental disorders were still classified according to very ancient categories, as the result of an alteration of the humours which caused melancholy and other dysfunctions, ‘passions’ of the rational soul originating in the body.
Epidemiological phenomena that had plagued previous centuries remained alive and worrying: syphilis (also treated with chemical methods, as can be seen from the text by David Abercromby presented in the catalogue) and other venereal diseases (texts by Nicolas de Blegny, who also compiled books of secrets for the use of Parisian high society, with advice on beauty and cosmetics); the plague (texts by Alferi, Alsario della Croce, Giovanni Battista Bindi, Charles Bourgdieu); fevers, which in Italy, and especially in Rome, were the object of particular concern. The subject of discussion was the mechanism of diffusion of epidemics and the possibility of intervention by civil and political authorities: see the text by Giovanni Battista Bolognetti, published on the occasion of the plague of 1656. Other diseases that had a strong social profile were also discussed, 
The pharmacopoeia was considered an integral part of medicine. During the century, medicines derived from plants – which involved the practical construction and maintenance of botanical gardens, and complex questions of classification on a theoretical level – were timidly joined by chemical remedies, which were viewed with suspicion by the more traditionalist part of the medical profession. Not entirely without reason, after all, because chemical medicines, in many cases more effective than those derived from simple substances, were administered in a completely empirical way and could be very dangerous for patients (see the text by Giovanni Balcianelli against the abuse of antimony). The debate on chemistry and its application to (spagyric) medicine was lively: the catalogue includes texts by François André and Robert Boyle, who was the greatest European representative of spagyric medicine. The remedies were classified in official publications, but there was no lack of operettas and reports, sometimes even loose sheets, which illustrated the miraculous virtues of certain substances (petroleum, opobalsam, chocolate, cinchona).
Among the remedies, mineral waters deserve special attention – also for the notable editorial production they gave rise to (see for example the text by Annibale Camilli on the waters of Nocera Umbra). Botany (like the classification of living animals) was affected by the scientific revolution: an example of this grafting of new classifications and discoveries onto a traditional fabric is the work of the Sicilian Paolo Boccone, where the problem of fossils is also discussed.
The catalogue contains pharmacopoeias compiled in many parts of Europe: Lyon (by Brice Bauderon, who also indicates chemical remedies); Sicily (by Paolo Boccone); Amsterdam (by Abraham Bogaert); Bologna, naturally Rome, and Florence.
To learn more: Bibliotheca medica: the seventeenth century. Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense, 2001