Secrets on Trial: Testing Wondrous Remedies in Late Renaissance Italy

• In Event: Body in the City I: "Sperimentato": Testing Medical Recipes in Early Modern Italy

Abstract

Testing drugs for quality and efficacy became commonplace in late Renaissance Italy. To date, scholars have focused on periodic sampling of medicaments by medical guilds to assure quality control and on princely trials of poison antidotes, where outcomes were immediate and sometimes fatal. This paper approaches pharmaceutical testing from a new direction by examining the process of patenting medical “secrets” in late Renaissance Italy. Sixteenth-century Italian states routinely issued exclusive marketing privileges for wondrous remedies as a way to incentivize new technologies and treatments, but makers had to demonstrate their efficacy to obtain what were akin to patents. Once in hand, patents also enabled makers to issue cheap print advertisements over which states exercised more limited control. Drawing on unpublished Florentine sources, I show how cultures of experimentation in Italy between 1550 and 1650 were significantly shaped by these state instruments and the marketing practices they fostered.

Author

• Sharon Strocchia, Emory University