In the preface to his 1588 treatise on surgery, Elizabethan surgeon William Clowes declared to his reader that “mine intent is not to hold my tongue at abuses” (A prooued practise sig. A1r). Thus began a section in which he discussed several stories of medical malpractice.1 In one, he described a “pernicious pill” that had…
Tag: early modern medicine
Pearl of Oyster, Tooth of Dog, and Sugar: Dental Hygiene in Renaissance Italy
Claire Litt // By the end of the 16th century sugar prices were within reach of the European middle class, and a dental crisis was upon them. The Portuguese colonized Brazil in 1516, establishing a sugar industry through the enslavement of African and Indigenous peoples. The effect was a dramatic fall in sugar prices in…
Bizarre Plots to Bezoars Stones: Poisons and Antidotes in Medici Florence
Claire Litt // On February 8th, 1548 a ciphered letter addressed to Duke Cosimo I reported that “The Farnesi every day try new practices to kill Don Ferrando [Gonzaga] with poison” (Medici Archive Project Doc ID# 5407). By the mid-16th century in Italy, the brazen daylight attacks that characterized assassinations of political leaders in previous…