Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: University of Bologna

  • Fortunio Liceti (1577-1567)—Aristotelean teratologist

    Fortunio Liceti’s mother was seven months pregnant when on a sea voyage to Rapallo (on the coast of Liguria) she went into labor—supposedly because of the motions of the ship. It has been said that her baby was so small that it fit into the palm of one hand. The father, a physician, placed it…

  • Girolamo Cardano: Renaissance physician and polymath

    Born at Pavia in the duchy of Lombardy in 1501, Girolamo Cardano practiced medicine for fifty years but is remembered chiefly as a polymath. He composed 200 works, made important contributions to mathematics and algebra, invented several mechanical devices (some still in use today), and published extensive philosophical tracts and commentaries on the ancient philosophers…

  • The dream of the uterus

    F. Gonzalez-Crussi Chicago, Illinois, United States More than one-half century ago, it was my duty to examine and describe, day in and day out, the bodily parts that surgeons removed at the hospital where I worked. Surely this peculiar daily routine must have incited the flights of fancy that I took then, and which I recount…

  • Giovanni Cortesi—Renaissance surgeon of Bologna and Messina

    We owe our gratitude to Dr. Paolo Savoia from the Department of History at King’s College London for his learned review of the life of Giovanni Batista Cortesi (1552–1643), a remarkable early Italian surgeon and physician who deserves to be better known. According to Dr. Savoia, the story of Giovanni Cortesi reads like a fairytale—how…

  • Foundations of anatomy in Bologna

    JMS PearceEast Yorks, England Home to the oldest western university,1 the University of Bologna was founded in 1088 and was a center of intellectual life during the Middle Ages, attracting scholars from throughout Europe. The University began as a law school. Medical teaching started circa 1156 and was taught in Latin translations, principally based on…