Leonardo Fioravanti (1517–88) was a noted doctor, surgeon and alchemist active in Italy in the 16th century.
Biography
Born in Bologna on October 5, 1517 to Gabriele and Margarite Fioravanti, Leonardo was baptised at the Metropolitan Cathedral of Saint Peter. His family had ties to the celebrated architects Aristotele Fioravanti, Bartolomeo et Aristote. He received his first degree in medicine at Naples, and his second on March 27, 1568 at Bologna. He was elevated into the nobility by the king of Spain.
He lived for a time in Rome and in Venice, and also in other important Italian cities. In Palermo, he performed the first recorded splenectomy on Italian soil.
Historians "have long portrayed Leonardo Fioravanti as the epitome of the cunning and dishonest charlatan." Although "he was by no means the first or the only one to take to the road."
Fioravanti died in Bologna in 1588.
Works
- Capricci medicinali (Venice, 1561)
- Secreti medicinali (Venice, 1561)
- Dello specchio di scientia universale (Venice, 1564)
- Del regimento della peste (Venice, 1565)
- Del compendio de i secreti rationali (Venice, 1566)
- La cirurgia (Venice, 1570). Translated into English in 1580 by John Hester as A Short Discours upon Chirurgerie
- Della fisica (Venice, 1582)
- Il tesoro della vita humana (Venice, 1582)
Further reading
- Camporesi, Piero (1997). Camminare il mondo. Vita e avventure di Leonardo Fioravanti medico del Cinquecento (in Italian). it:Garzanti Libri. ISBN 978-8811680789.
- Eamon, William (2003). "Pharmaceutical Self-Fashioning or How to Get Rich and Famous in the Renaissance Medical Marketplace". Pharmacy in History. 45 (3): 123–29. JSTOR 41112170. PMID 15025072.
- Eamon, William (2010). The Professor of Secrets: Mystery, Medicine and Alchemy in Renaissance Italy. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society. ISBN 978-1426206504.