Renaissance Medicine
by Constance Dauber Jones, MT(ASCP)
Special
Feature
Some of the persons and events
connected with the healing arts during
the Renaissance are presented. Many of
the names found within can be linked to
more than one of the arts, as well as to
medicine or surgery. The foundations of
surgery as we know it in theory were laid
during the Renaissance by the anatomists
who robbed graves to obtain bodies for
study. The history of medicine is the
history of men and women, who by their
compassion and curiosity made the healing arts serve all mankind. (Key words:
Renaissance; Anatomists; Leonardo da
Vinci; Marco Delia Torre; Berengario
da Carpi; Vesalius; Servetus; Fernel;
Pare; Paracelsus; Falloppio; Weyer.)
ticularly on medicine? W h o were
the artists of healing and the discoverers of new truths in science?
The great men of Renaissance
medicine were primarily anatomists w h o , in the course of their
w o r k , often made surprising and
accurate discoveries that sometimes contradicted the accepted
beliefs of the time. Because the
human body was being studied
more openly, new treatments and
surgical techniques were develo p e d , and the disciplines of surgery and pharmacology advanced
rapidly.
Introduction
It was during this period that
physicians began to make personal visits to the bedsides of the
sick instead of sending their
apprentices. Considerable surgical
knowledge was acquired on the
battlefields, where personal surgeons accompanied the princes
and mercenary captains of the
constantly warring nations and
cities. Complicated surgical procedures, such as removal of kidney
stones and cataracts, were being
performed. Even more astounding
was the increased rate of patient
recovery from these surgical procedures. This increased recovery
rate, seen then on a scale larger
than had been seen in Europe
before, presumably was accomplished through a combination of
the new regard for cleanliness
plus the new knowledge and skill
that was being acquired. Better
nutrition resulting from improved
diet, and less spoilage of f o o d stuffs through the application of
Renaissance, or rebirth, is the
name given to the time of transition from the Middle Ages to the
brink of the Industrial Revolution.
That period of history was marked
by the dawn of rediscovery of the
influences of Greek and Roman
civilization. The arts flourished,
architecture b l o o m e d , reflections
of the clean, classical lines of
antiquity appeared, a new type of
music was composed to be played
on new instruments, literature
came into its o w n with the advent
of printing, and education was
appreciated for its own sake.
The great names of the Renaissance are still with us in art,
politics, architecture and literature. But what effects did this
period have on science and parConstance Dauber Jones, MT(ASCP), is on
the staff of the Bacteriology Laboratory at
El Camino Hospital in Mountain View,
California.
better methods of storage and
preparation, were other contributing factors.
The Renaissance also brought
important changes in the susceptibility of people to certain
epidemic diseases. Both plague
and leprosy were greatly d i m i n ished as populations developed
immunity to these diseases. Mental disorders such as St. Vitus'
dance also were beginning to disappear with the passing of the
superstitions of the Middle Ages.
O n t h e n t h e r hand, this period in
history saw the spread of smallpox, measles, chickenpox, influenza, typhus and syphilis as a
result of the movements of armies
and the increased mobility of
populations.
During the Renaissance, the
practice of medicine was largely in
the hands of the laity rather than
the physicians, w h o were generally
better educated and more respected, as indicated by the writings of the period. One important
reason for the advance of medicine after the Middle Ages was the
gradual replacement of the religious view of illness as punishment for sin by the Hellenic view
of sickness as a lack of harmony in
the body. The idea of death as a
door to eternity gave way to the
desire to prolong and enjoy life.
But most important to the advancement of medicine was the
gradual lifting of the medieval ban
on dissection when the human
body was f o u n d to be an im-
0007-5027/80/1100/756 $00.70 © American Society of Clinical Pathologists
portant source of learning as well
as a source of wonder at its
vented are quite interesting to us
in the light of modern medicine.
perfection.
Andreas Vesalius
Leonardo da Vinci
The Renaissance produced perhaps the most gifted man in
human history, Leonardo da Vinci
(1452-1519), w h o was a painter,
sculptor, engineer, astronomer,
physicist, architect and anatomist.
The list of his achievements is
endless. He studied the human
body w i t h an open and lively
curiosity, and was not influenced
by the prejudices of the past.
Sadly, Leonardo's anatomic discoveries were largely confined to
his o w n notes; little was k n o w n of
his discoveries in his o w n t i m e . A
significant period of his life was
devoted entirely to the study of
anatomy, and his sketches of the
human body remain studies in
technical perfection. Leonardo was
the first to accurately describe
the human uterus, his drawings of
which are unsurpassed.
Marco Delia Torre
Marco Delia Torre (1470-?),
a friend of Leonardo, was another
great anatomist of the Renaissance.
Delia Torre practiced at the University of Bologna and is credited
with raising the stature of the
study of anatomy to a position so
high that it was included in the
general study of medicine.
Giacomo Berengario da Carpi
Giacomo Berengario da Carpi
(1470-1530) was a physician and
healer of great renown in his o w n
time and an anatomist of great
stature. After retiring from teaching at the University of Bologna,
he devoted himself to his medical
and surgical practice. He was the
first physician to study syphilis in
detail and to treat the infection
w i t h mercuric ointment. Many of
his drawings of dissections (Fig. 1)
and the instruments that he in-
Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564)
occupies a distinguished place in
the history of scientific achievement. A member of a family of
physicians and the son of a
pharmacist, Vesalius became an
anatomist of note and the personal physician to King Charles
of Spain. After studying in medical
schools in Paris and Montpellier,
Vesalius returned to Italy to teach
at the University of Padua. In this
environment of free thought and
research, he was able to develop
the study of anatomy through dissections. His great w o r k , De
Humani Corporis Fabrico, so richly
engraved and illustrated, is still
considered to be an anatomic text
par excellence; Sir William Osier,
eminent British physician of the
19th century, described this w o r k
as the greatest medical book ever
written.
It was Vesalius, forced to rob
graves and gallows to acquire
cadavers for his dissections, w h o
closed the doors of medical superstition and conjecture by detailing
the workings of the human body
in both health and disease. But
because his publications on anatomy showed that the 1st century
Greek physician, Galen, was wrong
in his theories, he was reviled
and bitterly condemned by the
diehard traditionalists and outright bigots w h o maintained, even
in the face of positive proof to the
contrary, that Galen's descriptions
of animal organs were true descriptions of the human body.
After his death, however, Vesalius'
work lived o n ; largely because of
his efforts, the study of anatomy
became a basic prerequisite for
the study of medicine and surgery.
Michael Servetus
In exploring Renaissance medicine, advances in the study of
physiology were also notable.
Fig. 1. The heart. Adapted from an
original drawing by Berengario da
Carpi (1523).
Perhaps the most interesting discovery of this period was the discovery of the circulation of b l o o d .
Leonardo da Vinci and Vesalius
undoubtedly guessed at the t r u t h ,
but it was Michael Servetus (15111553) w h o first wrote of the bold
new concept of circulation. Servetus, however, was accused of
heresy and burned to death in
Geneva by the followers of John
Calvin, along with the book that
was his life w o r k , Restitutio. Thus,
medicine suffered another setback on the long road of discovery.
Jean Fernel
Jean Fernel (1497-1558), a professor at the University of Paris,
published Univerca Medicini
in
1554 to serve as a standard text on
physiology and pathology. Fernel
was the first to make an exacting
and c o m p r e h e n s i v e study of
aneurysms. He also achieved some
note as the personal physician to
Catherine de M e d i c i , a position
LABORATORY MEDICINE . VOL 11. NO. 11, NOVEMBER 1980 7 5 7
which no doubt enabled him to
devote time and money t o his
studies.
Gerolimo Francastoro
Gerolimo Francastoro (1478?), a man of nobility, wealth
and learning, was destined to
become one of the four most
important names in Renaissance
medicine, along with Paracelsus,
Pare and Vesalius. He studied
epidemiology and published De
Contagion et Contagiosi
Mordes,
in which he asserted that infection
traveled from person to person.
He was the first to use the w o r d
" f o m i t e " to mean an inanimate
source of disease. Francastoro
described and studied typhus,
and he also coined the term
" s y p h i l i s , " from the name of a
shepherd w h o offended the gods
and thus was infected w i t h the
disease. He was also one of the
first to differentiate syphilis from
plague, previously considered to
be variants of the same disease.
tice of lecturing and w r i t i n g in
their o w n language instead of in
Latin. A l t h o u g h some of his
theories have proven false in the
light of modern medicine, Paracelsus made innumerable and
valuable contributions to medicine. Examples of his inventions
of diagnostic tools and surgical
instruments are shown in Figs.
2 and 3.
Ambroise Pare
The greatest surgeon of the
Renaissance was Ambroise Pare
(1510-1590), w h o began his studies
as a b a r b e r - s u r g e o n but went on
to become physician to three
kings of France. Pare is responsible for abolishing the Arabian
method of applying boiling oil
and cautery to wounds. He once
used bandages on wounds in-
Philippus Aureolus Paracelsus
Paracelsus (1493-1531) stands
out among the physicians of this
p e r i o d . He was one of the most
interesting figures of the Renaissance, a teacher w h o returned to
the bedsides of the sick and
became a clinician in the true
sense of the w o r d . Born the son
of a doctor in the Swiss Alps,
Paracelsus studied at the University of Ferrara in Italy and then
traveled for ten years before
returning to Switzerland to set up
practice in Basel. He studied both
medicine and chemistry, and was
especially interested in the diseases of miners. He introduced
o p i u m , arsenic, sulfur and mercury to medicine, and proved their
therapeutic usefulness in his o w n
practice.
Paracelsus was at times bitterly
opposed by his peers, but he was
greatly admired by the c o m m o n
people w h o appreciated his prac-
Fig. 3. Surgical forceps (c. 1551).
These forceps are an example of
the decorative style of the Renaissance period
extending
into
medicine.
curred in battle when the supply
of oil gave out, and he was surprised to find that the bandaged
patients survived in greater numbers and showed less morbidity
than those whose wounds had
been cauterized. He was the first
to control hemorrhage through
the practice of arterial ligation.
Pare has been described as "audacious, humble and always caring
of his patients."
Fig. 2. Paracelsus' glass vessel for
the distillation of urine. The level
of urine sediment, measured in
the graduated vessel, was believed
to indicate the locus of a disease
on the miniature human body.
7 5 8 LABORATORY MEDICINE • VOL 11, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 1980
Gabriele Falloppio
Gabriele Falloppio (1523-1562)
was perhaps the most illustrious
of 16th century Italian anatomists.
He studied at Ferrara, Pisa and
Padua, and he is claimed to have
been a genius. Falloppio studied
the veins and arteries, and he is
immortalized for his discovery of
the uterine tubes which bear his
name. O n e reason for his success
was the larger number of dissections he was able to perform.
Falloppio was leader of the Italian
school that led the way in the
study of anatomy.
Johann Weyer
Weyer dared protest this book by
publishing De Praestigius Daemonium, in which he stated that
most, if not all, of the people
convicted of witchcraft were either
physically or mentally ill patients
w h o deserved medical help and
treatment. Many years were to
pass before the treatment of
mental patients changed; nevertheless, Weyer held a very enlightened view for his time and
suffered the animosity of his contemporaries for his theories.
In the closing years of the
Renaissance, Johann Weyer was a
pioneer in physiology. To understand Weyer and his w o r k , one
should be aware of a book published in 1489, Hammer of Witches,
an unlovely work which served as
a handbook for witch hunters.
Conclusion
During the Renaissance, which
lasted f r o m 1450 to 1600 A . D . , many
took advantage of the new dawn in
science by engaging in research
and writing that w o u l d forever
change the practice of medicine.
The names mentioned here are
only a few of the many physicians,
surgeons, anatomists and physiologists w h o w o r k e d on behalf of
the science of medicine during
this time of rebirth.
General References
Castiglione, A., 1958. History of Medicine. New
York. Knopf, pp. 408-487.
Glasschieb, H.S.. 1963. The March of Medicine.
New York. Putnam and Sons, pp. 85-130.
Left and Leff, 1958. From Witchcraft to World
Health. New York. MacMillan Co., pp. 110147.
Marti Ibanez, R, 1962. The Epic of Medicine.
New York, Bromhall House, pp. 159-185.
Marti Ibanez, F., 1961. A Prelude to Medical
His'ory. New York, MD Publications, pp.
126-144.
McNeil. W.. 1977. Plagues and Peoples. Garden
City. N.Y.. Anchor Books, pp. 176-208.
Shippen, K., 1957. Men of Medicine. New York,
Viking Press, pp. 59-67.
Starbinski, J., 1964. A History of Medicine.
New York. Hawthorne Books, pp. 41 - 6 1 . •
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