Review article
https://doi.org/10.31952/amha.18.2.9
THE HISTORY OF SYPHILIS IN THE XVI CENTURY AND THE PIVOTAL ROLE OF LUIGI LUIGINI IN THE RENAISSANCE
Mariano Martini
; University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy
Emanuele Armocida
; University of Parma, Parma, Italy
Luca Lo Basso
; University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy
Emiliano Beri
; University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy
Nicola Luigi Bragazzi
; University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy
Alessandra Parodi
; University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
Abstract
Syphilis is the prime example of a “new disease” which triggered a transnational (European)
discussion among physicians. It appeared between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning
of the Modern Times (at the beginning of the sixteenth century), a time in which
medicine was changing from a dogmatic to an experimental discipline.
The main changes were in the field of anatomy: in 1543, the same year of the astronomy-disrupting
work by Nicolas Copernicus, the new less dogmatic and more empirical approach to
anatomy by Andreas Vesalius was published.
Nevertheless, in the Renaissance, medicine remains a tradition-bound discipline, proud of its
millennial history and its superiority over the empirical, non-academic healers.
When syphilis appeared in Europe, several explanations were elaborated. In the mid-16th
century, an Italian doctor Luigi Luigini (born in 1526) published in Venice a collection
of all the works on syphilis that appeared until 1566. He wanted to entrust to colleagues, contemporary and future, a compendium of all that was known about the “new” disease (the
Latin term Novus means both “new” and “strange”).
According to the most authors of the collection, the disease is in fact “new” and “strange”.
Some authors of the collection find it impossible that authorities like Hippocrates and Galen
overlooked it. Luigini’s work shows the authors’ effort to absorb syphilis in the corpus of academic
medicine and affirm the authority of academic physicians against the empirical
healers.
Keywords
De Morbus Gallicus, Renaissance, Luigi Luigini, Collection on Syphilis (1566-1567)
Hrčak ID:
251602
URI
Publication date:
31.12.2020.
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