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Between medieval and modern world, two centuries produced a rich age of fantastic contrasts: spiritual greatness and stingy despotism, magnificent arts and despicable policies, stimulant minds and decadent moral. It was the colorful and exciting Renaissance.
The most notable facet of Renaissance was the humanist movement, which revived the spirit of classical antiquity through the reverent study of Greek and Latin authors. Among humanists there were several erudite physicians skilled in Greek and Latin who worked hardly to separate medical teaching from the inaccurate Arabian texts. Famous for his irate attacks to the imprecision of Hippocrates and Galen was Niccolo da Lonigo (Leonicenus, 1428-1524), who brought to effect the monumental work of correcting botanical mistakes in Natural History by Pliny.
Renaissance was marked by a mysterious disease known as sweating sickness, that arose at the Welsh coast and spread as far as London. As was later described by court physician John Caius, the illness used to begin very suddenly, with a sense of apprehension, cold shivers, giddiness, neck pain and prostration. In its acute stage, victims suffered from heat, profuse sweat, intense thirst, and miliary eruptions; death frequently came within 24 hours; recovery took from eight to 14 days. Six great epidemics of sudor anglicus occurred in the following six decades, one of them reducing the populations of Oxford and Cambridge to half. A most devastating scourge was typhoid fever, first described accurately by Girolamo Fracastoro.
Many Renaissance children were rickety: in the 16th century, Ambroise Paré described varus and valgus deformities of legs. Scurvy attacked sailors on long sea voyages. It had been observed in the Middle Ages, when food furnishment was interrupted to towns under siege. Smallpox and malaria, predominant in the Middle Ages, continued to appear sporadically during Renaissance centuries. Syphilis would also make its dramatic ingress into this scenery: hospitals were built for its treatment, which included generous unctions with mercury. Quacks, known as eruption greasers, rubbed patients from head to feet with so-called Saracen ointment and submitted them to sweat baths. They believed that salivation and sudation eliminated syphilitic poisons.
Renaissance also marks the appearance of surgeons, repelled by the physicians of the time. The reaction, nevertheless, did not avoid the advance of the first surgical techniques, which included tissues transplant and cystotomy with perineal incision technique and catheterism.
Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
22 Sept 2006 -
Date of issue
Aug 2006
