The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800Buck, Albert H. (Albert Henry)
History
The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800
Buck, Albert H. (Albert Henry)
Medicine -- History
In 1542 Francis the First, King of France, gave a great impulse to the
study of medicine by calling Guido Guidi from Florence, Italy, to teach
that science in the _Collége de France_, an institution which
he had founded at Paris in 1530. Guidi, upon his arrival in Paris,
was at once most cordially received, both by those who were to be his
colleagues and by the King. Francis bestowed upon him a suitable gift,
appointed him to the position of First Physician (Archiater) at his
Court, and assured him that he would receive an ample salary during
his residence in the French metropolis. In 1547, after the death of
Francis the First, Guidi returned to his home in Florence, where Cosimo
dei Medici, at that time the head of the Florentine Republic and a
little later Grand Duke of Tuscany (Cosimo III.), made him his First
Physician and gave him the appointment of Professor of Philosophy in
the University of Pisa. Not long afterward Guidi was transferred to the
Chair of Medicine. He retained this position almost up to the time of
his death (May 26, 1569), and during this long period Cosimo bestowed
upon him various ecclesiastic honors, which not only increased his
social rank but added materially to his financial resources.
Dezeimeris says that, while Guidi does not deserve to be placed, as
an anatomist, in the same rank with Vesalius and Fallopius,[73] he
merits full credit for the very important service which he rendered the
physicians of his day by placing within their reach translations of
certain Greek treatises relating to surgical topics--such treatises,
for example, as those of Hippocrates on ulcers, on wounds of the
head, on the joints and on fractures (with Galen’s comments), Galen’s
treatise on fasciae, and that of Oribasius on ligatures and other
surgical contrivances.
Apart from his merits as a worker in the field of medical science,
Guidi occupies a creditable place in the history of medicine as a
fine type of the well-educated and kindly disposed physician, as the
following testimony given by Benvenuto Cellini, the distinguished
Florentine sculptor, shows:--
On the occasion of my visit to Paris I made the acquaintance
of Messer Guidi, and I wish to state in what a very friendly
manner I was received by that noble citizen of Florence and
excellent physician, the most virtuous, the most lovable, and
the most domestic man whom I have ever met.
Guidi’s treatise on anatomy was first published at Venice (under the
editorship of his nephew) in 1611--_i.e._, forty-two years after
his death. His translations from the Greek treatises of Hippocrates,
Galen and Oribasius will be found in the work which bears the title
“_Collectio Chirurgica Parisina_,” Paris, 1544.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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