The teaching and study of medicine at the studio of Padua attracted numerous foreigners during the sixteenth century, due in part to the astounding achievements of its faculty. Padua gained a reputation from the innovations of professors such as Girolamo Fracastoro, Giambattista Da Monte, Girolamo Mercuriale, Girolamo Capodivacca, Vittore Trincavelli, Gabriele Falloppia and Girolamo Fabrici d’Aquapendente, who offered new ways of thinking about anatomy, pathology, diagnostics, pharmacology and clinical treatments. The famous but brief sojourn of Andreas Vesalius at Padua also has left an indelible mark on the history of medicine. These sixteenth-century Paduans created a culture of observation that meshed with the nascent humanistic medicine that applied philological techniques, developed by Angelo Poliziano and Niccolò Leoniceno, first to the Galenic and then the Hippocratic corpus.
While it has long been recognised that Paduan medical studies greatly influenced medical pedagogy and practice well beyond Italy through its notable alumni, the details of these transfers of knowledge are still not fully understood. The essays of this volume aim to shed light on how Padua shaped the English medical landscape, largely focusing on three notable physicians, Thomas Linacre, John Caius and William Harvey, who all studied at Padua and were at the forefront of the field on returning to England. Like many collections of conference proceedings, the essays of this volume vary greatly in both scholarliness and polish. For example, Daniela Marrone’s excellent and well-documented study on Linacre’s philological investigations is based on nearly four pages of bibliography; Andrew Cunningham’s essay on Harvey’s debts to Fabrici, a theme that will be well known to all who have read his classic essay on Fabrici’s ‘Aristotle Project’, and Roger French’s work on William Harvey, contains just four items in the bibliography.
Perhaps unintentionally, many of the essays seem to undermine the importance of Padua. Marrone’s contribution suggests that Linacre’s contacts made in Florence and Venice were the spurs that pushed him to embark on important editorial work on Galen. Louella Vaughan’s essay on Linacre and the establishment and impact of the Royal College of Physicians, points not just to Italian medical guilds as the inspiration but also to the organisation of the mercantile companies of the City. Cunningham links Harvey’s Aristotelianism and interest in the heart to Fabrici’s anatomical studies, but also notes that they do not appear to have had any interpersonal relations. Jonathan Woolfson documents a decline in the numbers of English students after the 1550s. When this number recovered in the 1590s, the rigour had softened, and stays in Padua formed part of intellectual tourism that can be seen as a precursor of the grand tour, thereby making Harvey’s deep engagement with his studies an exception. In contrast to Fabio Zampieri’s chapter, which, brimming with civic pride, emphasises religious tolerance and the libertas patavina, Vivian Nutton’s skilful conclusion contends that the Inquisition was largely responsible for the declining numbers of English students in the second half of the sixteenth century. Additionally, Woolfson points to internal pressures in Elizabethan England that discouraged travel to Catholic countries, as well as the rise of Leiden as an alternative. Nevertheless, if relative tolerance to Protestants rendered Padua attractive to foreign students, it does little to explain the activities of the Linacre and Caius, who were both Catholic.
The strengths of the volume stem from showing the connections between England and Padua related to medical humanism and anatomy, in addition to the strong presence of Paduan alumni in the Royal College of Physicians, as demonstrated in the chapter by Gaetano Thiene and Linda Luxon. As such, the links and influence between Padua and England are still not fully fleshed out. Arguably, Da Monte’s descriptions of disease and therapy derived from clinical observations conducted in the hospital of San Francesco and described in his Consilia – which were published posthumously with the help of Girolamo Donzellini, who was executed for heresy in Venice in 1587, accused of relapsing into Protestantism – are just as monumental as the visually stunning anatomy books of Vesalius and his successors. Da Monte, however, is mentioned only in Nutton’s conclusion and we are left only to wonder if English students were inspired by his hands-on approach. While much is made of the revival of Galenism at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the later Hippocratism of Girolamo Mercuriale and his application of ancient works on epidemics to contemporary plagues goes unmentioned. Numerous other questions remain unanswered. Did Padua’s orto botanico, which was the first of its kind among Renaissance universities, influence and inspire English students? Did English students import theories of method and diagnosis developed in Padua? Did English students react to the Averroism and rich studies of Arabic authors that flourished in Padua and its environs? Can Robert Fludd’s writings be reconciled or contrasted with what he encountered there? Was the exchange unidirectional, or did the English influence their Italian hosts? In the end, more questions arise than are fully answered by this book.
Beautiful illustrations, including colour reproductions of Harvey’s diploma, fill this lavishly produced volume. It is a shame, however, that the same degree of attention given to the book’s production was not extended to improve the copyediting and revise a number of the chapters that appear to have changed little from their original form as conference papers. The collected efforts do well to point to a promising subject, but the notable gaps mean that there is far more to write on the subject.
