Avi Ohry
Tel Aviv, Israel

Traumatic injuries are common, resulting from war, natural disasters, workplace mishaps, accidents, or sports. But severe bodily damage occurring in a library?

In 1359, the famous Italian poet, humanist, and philosopher from Arezzo, Francesco Petrarch (1304–1374), was reading a book in his library written by one of his admired Roman scholars, Cicero. The book was huge and heavy and slipped from his hands, damaging his leg. He was not treated properly, and after a year of pain and infection, was near amputation. In letters to friends, he described his suffering and ongoing attempts to not obey his physicians’ misleading recommendations. He also asked why his “mentor,” Cicero, was punishing him.¹

Indeed, researchers attest that Petrarch’s skeleton shows signs of many past injuries, which he recorded in his writings, including an injury from a donkey kick when he was forty-two.²

Petrarch often expressed his contempt for physicians³ and wrote one of the first descriptions of gout.^4-5

References

1. Petrarch. “Letters of Friendly Intercourse, and Miscellaneous Letters.” Bloomsbury Publishing. http://media.bloomsbury.com/rep/files/primary-source-71-petrarch.pdf
2. “Petrarch.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrarch
3. Donaldson I. “Petrarch’s letter to Boccaccio ‘on the proud and presumptuous behaviour of physicians’.” J R Soc Med. 2016 Sep;109(9):347-53. doi:10.1177/0892705716663088.
4. Schwartz SA. “Disease of distinction.” Explore (NY). 2006 Nov-Dec;2(6):515-9. doi: 10.1016/j.explore.2006.08.007.
5. Benedek TG, Rodman GP. “Petrarch on medicine and the gout.” Bull Hist Med. 1963 Sep-Oct;37:397-416.