ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

On the Surface of Paradox: supporting experimental discovery and resisting clinical innovation in Redi medical and experimental practices.

• In Event: Seeing Health: Representing Medical Knowledge in Early Modern period

English Abstract

In 1687, Giovanni Cosimo Bonomo (1666-1696), a pupil of the renowned physician Francesco Redi (1626-1697), published his Osservazioni intorno a’ pellicelli del corpo umano (1687) in the form of a letter addressed to his master. Redi had actively supported and encouraged Bonomo’s research, maintaining a dense correspondence both with him and — even more extensively — with Diacinto Cestoni (1637-1718), another key collaborator in the investigations into the origins of scabies. It was thanks to Bonomo and Cestoni that the disease was correctly identified as having a parasitic (acarine) and contagious aetiology, a view that directly challenged the prevailing humoral interpretations and, more broadly, Galenic and partly Aristotelian medical authority. Redi consistently expressed enthusiasm for the experimental inquiries carried out by the two investigators, celebrating their achievements and emphasising the significance of their results. Nevertheless, letters from the 1690s reveal that, in his medical practice, Redi never recommended the treatments proposed by Bonomo and Cestoni to patients suffering from scabies, adhering instead to traditional Galenic–Aristotelian therapeutic practice.
This paper seeks to explore the reasons behind this apparent contradiction between Redi’s support for experimental research on scabies and his reluctance to apply its pioneering findings in his own medical practice.

Author

• Noemi Di Tommaso, Università degli Studi di Milano