The Emergence of Chemical Medicine in Early Modern Naples (1600–1660)

Abstract

Despite the increasing interest in Italian medicine, comparatively little attention has been paid to the establishment of iatrochemistry. Though this process spread throughout the Peninsula, Naples witnessed an impressive growth of chemical research and the outbreak of a conflict between the medical establishment and the chemical physicians. The purpose of this article is to explore the emergence of chemical medicine in Naples in the period that precedes the founding (1663) of the Accademia degli Investiganti. In the first part of the seventeenth century, chemistry achieved recognition in settings like academies, pharmacies, hospitals, and monasteries. Chemical studies and the making of new remedies were spurred by the scientific exchange that Neapolitan savants established with scholars from different areas. The so-called medical pluralism and the recurrent outbreaks of epidemics stimulated the introduction of new chemical therapies, which coexisted with old ones. The establishment of chemical medicine was triggered by Marco Aurelio Severino (1580–1656), who, besides promoting chemical remedies, resorted to chemical theories, including Paracelsian ones, to account for physiological processes. Severino was the mentor of the chemical physicians who gave rise to the Accademia degli Investiganti. One of Severino’s disciples was Giuseppe Donzelli (1596–1670), who fostered chemical remedies in Naples.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Carmen Schmechel and an anonymous referee for reading my manuscript and offering comments and suggestions. Conversations with Oreste Trabucco and Maria Conforti helped me work through problems and clarify my ideas.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Maria Conforti, “Medicine, History and Religion in Naples in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Medicine and Religion in Enlightenment Europe, ed. Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham (London: Routledge, 2007), 63–78; Lorenza Gianfrancesco and Neil Tarrant, eds., The Science of Naples: Making Knowledge in Italy’s Pre-eminent City, 1500–1800 (London: UCL Press, 2024) https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10192731/1/The-Science-of-Naples.pdf (accessed June 25, 2024).

2 David Gentilcore, Healers and Healing in Early Modern Italy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 1–28.

3 Maria Conforti, “Subterranean Fires and Chemical Exhalations: Mineral Waters in the Phlegraean Fields in the Early Modern Age,” in Le Thermalisme, approches historiques et archéologiques d'un phénomène culturel et médical, ed. John Scheid, Marilyn Nicoud, Didier Boisseuil, and Joël Coste (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2015), 123–36.

4 Max H. Fisch, “The Academy of the Investigators,” in Science, Medicine and History, ed. E. Ashworth Underwood, 2 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1953), vol. 1, 521–63; Maurizio Torrini, “L’Accademia degli Investiganti. Napoli 1663–1670,” Quaderni storici 23 (1973): 845–83. For the chemical research of the Investiganti, see Antonio Clericuzio, “Conflict and Compromise in Neapolitan Medicine,” forthcoming.

5 According to Gentilcore, in Naples, the office of the Protomedicato, though a prestigious one, was rather ceremonial. The main task of protophysicians, who were appointed by the viceroy, were the inspections of apothecaries and of unlicensed medical practitioners. Gentilcore, Healers and Healing, 29–55.

6 For Bartoli, see Nicola Badaloni, Introduzione a Vico (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1961), 65–71 et seq.; Raffaella M. Zaccaria, ed., Sebastiano Bartoli e la cultura termale del suo tempo (Firenze: Olschki, 2012). For the censorship of Bartoli’s work, see Leen Spruit, “Sebastiano Bartoli on Life and the Soul,” Bruniana & Campanelliana 23 (2017): 753–65.

7 Sebastiano Bartoli, Artis Medicae Dogmatum Examen (Venetiis: Sumptibus Stephani Taurini, 1666), 52. For the controversy over phlebotomy, see Antonio Clericuzio, “De Sanguinis Missione. Le dispute sulla flebotomia nell’Italia del Seicento,” Galilaeana 19 (2022), 23–53.

8 The pamphlet was titled Discorso nel quale si dimostra che i medicamenti spargirici sieno per lo più mal sicuri e pericolosi, e da non permettersi senza l'approbazione de’ medici galenisti (n.p.; n.d.), was authored by one Moinerio di Giarbio, likely a pseudonym for Federigo Meninni (1636–1712), a physician who was linked to Pignataro but subsequently sided with the Investiganti. See Carlo Alberto Girotto, “Federigo Meninni,” in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani (Roma: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 1960–2020) (hereafter DBI), vol. 73, 515–18.

9 [Leonardo di Capua], Discorso per difesa dell’arte chimica, e de’ professori d’essa (Naples, n.d.). This anonymous pamphlet, likely written by Di Capua, was published in 1663, see Maurizio Torrini, “Uno scritto sconosciuto di Leonardo Di Capua in difesa dell’arte chimica,” Bollettino del Centro di Studi Vichiani, 4 (1974): 126–39.

10 On Paracelsianism in Italy, see Giancarlo Zanier, “La medicina paracelsiana in Italia: aspetti di un’accoglienza particolare,” Rivista di Storia della Filosofia 4 (1985): 627–53; Paolo Galluzzi, “Motivi paracelsiani nella Toscana di Cosimo II e di Don Antonio dei Medici: alchimia, medicina ‘chimica’ e riforma del sapere,” in Scienze, credenze occulte, livelli di cultura (Firenze: Olschki, 1982), 31–62; Antonio Clericuzio, “Chemical Medicine and Paracelsianism in Italy (1550–1650)” in The Theory and Practice of Reform, ed. Margaret Pelling and Scott Mandelbrote (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 59–79.

11 Campanella’s attitude to Paracelsus was ambivalent: he eulogised the chemical remedies, gave credit to Paracelsus’s claim that he was able to produce the homunculus, yet he rejected the doctrine of the tria prima. See Nicola Badaloni, Tommaso Campanella (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1965), 73, 99, 101–02, 169; Michel-Pierre Lerner, “Campanella et Paracelse,” in Alchimie et philosophie à la Renaissance, ed. Jean-Claude Margolin and Sylvain Matton (Paris: Vrin, 1993), 379–93. See also Guido Giglioni, “La medicina di Tommaso Campanella tra metafisica e cultura popolare,” in Laboratorio Campanella: biografia, contesti, iniziative in corso, ed. Germana Ernst and C. Fiorani (Roma: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2007), 177–95. On Campanella and medicine, see Maria Conforti, “Tracce campanelliane nella medicina italiana del Seicento,” Bruniana & Campanelliana 23 (2017): 587–96.

12 Della Porta to Federico Cesi, 16 December 1612, in Carteggio Linceo, ed. Giuseppe Gabrieli (Roma: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1996), 300.

13 Some information on alchemy in Naples can be found in Massimo Marra, Il Pulicinella Filosofo Chimico: uomini e idee dell’alchimia a Napoli nel periodo del viceregno (Milan: Mimesis, 2000).

14 Mar Rey Bueno, Señores del Fuego. Destiladores y Espagíricos en la Corte de Los Austrias (Madrid: Corona Borealis: 2002); Rey Bueno, “La Mayson pour Distiller des Eaües at El Escorial: Alchemy and Medicine at the Court of Philip II, 1556–1598,” Medical History 53 (2009): 26–39; William Eamon, “Masters of Fire: Italian Alchemists in the Court of Philip II,” in Chymia: Science and Nature in Early Modern Europe (1450–1750), ed. Miguel López Pérez and Didier Kahn (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), 138–56.

15 Girolamo Ruscelli, Secreti nuovi (Venezia: eredi di Marchiò Sessa 1567), 1r–7r. See William Eamon and Françoise Paheau, “The Accademia Segreta of Girolamo Ruscelli: A Sixteenth-Century Italian Scientific Society,” Isis 75 (1984): 327–42; and William Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 198–200. It is not clear where the Accademia met, possibly in Salerno under the Patronage of Ferrante Sanseverino.

16 Leonardo Fioravanti, Il tesoro della vita humana (Venice: Melchiorre Sessa, 1570), 50r–v. In a letter to a certain Alfonso da Rienzo, Fioravanti referred to an academy where he and his friends, including Giovan Battista d’Azzia and Marchese di Laterza, performed transmutations and prepared alchemical medicines. Fioravanti, Il tesoro della vita humana, 234v. See William Eamon, The Professor of Secrets: Mystery, Medicine, and Alchemy in Renaissance Italy (Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, 2010), 102–10.

17 Nicola Badaloni, “I Fratelli Della Porta e la cultura magica e astrologica a Napoli nel '500,” Studi Storici 1 (1959–1960): 677–715; Eamon, Science and the Secrets, 194–233.

18 Giovan Battista Della Porta, “De Phoebi et Pythonis pugna,” Magiæ naturalis, sive De miraculis rerum naturalium libri 4 (Napoli: M. Cancer, 1558), chapter 8.. Della Porta relies upon the Summa perfectionis of ps.-Geber. See Didier Kahn and Alfredo Perifano, “Giambattista Della Porta e l’allegoria alchemica De Phoebi et Pythonis pugna,” in Il cenacolo alchemico. Incontri ed eventi ispirati al pensiero di Giovan Battista Della Porta, ed. Alfonso Paolella and Gennaro Rispoli (Napoli: Edizioni Il Faro d’Ippocrate, 2018), 43–64. According to Guibertus, Domenico Pizzimenti, the Calabrian humanist who translated into Latin Greek alchemical texts, taught young Della Porta rudiments of alchemy and wrote book three of Magia naturalis; see Nicolaus Guibertus, Alchymia ratione et experientia ita demum viriliter impegnata et expugnata, una cum suis fallaciis et delirati (Strasbourg: L. Zetzner, 1603), 134–35. Whereas Kahn and Perifano consider Guibertus’ claim unreliable, Pausillo gives more credit to Guibertus’ testimony; see Giorgia Pausillo, “Nuove considerazioni sui manoscritti alchemici di Domenico Pizzimenti,” Scripta 13 (2020): 141–59.

19 Della Porta, Magiæ naturalis libri 20 (Napoli: O. Salviani, 1589); Laura Balbiani, La Magia naturalis di Giovan Battista Della Porta: Lingua, cultura e scienza in Europa all'inizio dell'eta moderna (Bern-Berlin: Peter Lang, 2001).

20 “The Paracelsians define a Quintessence to be the Form, or Spirit, or Vertue, or Life, separated from the gross and elementary impurities of the Body”: Giovan Battista Della Porta, Natural Magick, (London: T. Young and S. Speed, 1628), 268.

21 Della Porta, Natural Magick, 268.

22 On Della Porta and the Accademia dei Lincei, see Antonio Clericuzio and Silvia de Renzi, “Medicine, Alchemy and Natural Philosophy in the Early Accademia dei Lincei,” in Italian Academies of the Sixteenth Century, ed. David S. Chambers and François Quiviger (London: Warburg Institute, 1995), 175–94.

23 Giovan Battista Della Porta, De distillatione lib. IX. Quibus certa methodo, multiplicique artificio, penitioribus naturae arcanis detectis, cuiuslibet mixti in propria elementa resolutio, perfecte docetur (Camera Apostolica: Roma, 1608), 2–6.

24 “Trattansi in questo settimo libro della Taumatologia la utilissima ed eccellentissima arte della trasmutazione dei metalli, anzi della reina delle arti e delle scienze … Da qui si viene alla cognizione della pietra filosofale, ch’avanza tutte le meraviglie delle meraviglie della natura”: Giovan Battista Della Porta, Taumatologia e Criptologia (Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2013), 16.

25 “Di questa suprema medicina de’ corpi humani sparse Raimondo Lullo le prime fondamenta posta poi in uso dal gran Paracelso e seguita poi da lor dottissimi seguaci e già sparsa per tutta la Germania, e preso grandissimo augmento, va spargendosi per tutto il mondo”: Della Porta, Taumatologia e Criptologia, 20.

26 On Della Porta’s Academy, see “Vita di Giovan Battista della Porta Napolitano. Scritta da Pompeo Sarnelli” prefixed to Giovan Battista Della Porta, Chirofisonomia (Napoli: Bulifon, 1677); see also Eamon, Science and Secrets, 199–200.

27 For the Oziosi, see Girolamo de Miranda, Una quiete operosa. Forma e pratiche dell’Accademia napoletana degli Oziosi (Napoli: Federiciana, 2000). Members of the Oziosi academy paid close attention to the Vesuvio eruption of 1631. Gianfrancesco convincingly argues that the Oziosi played a part in Neapolitan science; see Lorenza Gianfrancesco, “From Propaganda to Science: Looking at the World of Academies in Early Seventeenth-Century Naples,” California Italian Studies Journal 3, no. 1 (2012): 1–31. In 1652 Cornelio read a discourse on astronomical matters: Tommaso Cornelio, Discorso dell'eclissi detto nell’Accademia degli Oziosi nel dì 29 di maggio 1652 dato in luce per l’Accademico detto l'Arrestato (Napoli: Cavallo, 1652).

28 Ferrante Imperato, “Ferrante Imperato agli Lettori,” Dell’Historia Naturale Libri 18 (Napoli: C. Vitale, 1599), sig. c4 r–v. For Imperato, see Cesare Preti, “Imperato,” DBI, vol. 62, 286–91; Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 41, 225–29, et seq.; Enrica Stendardo, Ferrante Imperato: collezionismo e studio della natura a Napoli tra Cinque e Seicento (Napoli: Accademia Pontaniana, 2001).

29 Giuseppe Gabrieli, ed., Carteggio Linceo, 196–200, 209. For Stigliola, see Saverio Ricci, “Stigliola,” DBI, vol. 94, 246–49 and Massimo Rinaldi, L’audacia di Pythio. Filosofia, scienza e architettura in Colantonio Stigliola (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999). Stigliola’s Theriace et mithridatia […] libellus (Neapoli: apud Marinum de Alexandro, 1577), sig. [*a1]r–v bears evidence of his association with Imperato, who authored a letter supporting Maranta against professors from Padua (notably Marco degli Oddi) in the controversy about the composition of Theriac. See Cesare Preti’s entry Ferrante Imperato for the DBI, 62, 286–90. Disputes on Theriac took place in many Italian cities and often bore on the role of apothecaries in the preparation of medicines. Cf. Findlen, Possessing Nature, 284–86 and Andrea Cuna, Editoria e testi De re medica. La controversia fra Nicola Antonio Stigliola e i medici patavini, in Nicola Antonio Stigliola enciclopedista e linceo, ed. Saverio Ricci (Roma: Atti dell'Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. Memorie, Classe di Scienze Morali, Storiche e Filologiche, 1996), 66–74.

30 Stigliola, Theriace et mithridatia, 28r–29r.

31 I do not agree with Findlen’s statement that Imperato: “was instrumental in establishing an experimental culture that moved away from the humanist view of knowledge as a textual entity and toward a more artifactual understanding of nature” (Findlen, Possessing Nature, 226). Dell’Historia naturale is filled with references to ancient authors. Like most Renaissance Italian naturalists, Imperato saw the classical tradition as a source of knowledge to be integrated with observations and experiments.

32 Imperato, Historia, 366, 399–400.

33 “E’ famoso l’antimonio nel purgar l’oro nelle miniere di altri metalli e le altre sue impurità e ai tempi nostri è stato introdotto nella purgatione dei corpi umani, ridotto prima nelle sue calci, & a fusion vitrea, e dato in piccole dosi, caccian li chimisti dall’antimonio preparato con l’aceto una tintura di color rosso, che chiamano sangue d’antimonio”: Imperato, Historia Naturale, 438.

34 Imperato, Historia Naturale, 571.

35 “Diciamo dunque, che la tintura convenientemente preparata, è medicina che consuma li mali tutti, non altrimente che il fuoco consuma il legno. Dassene di essa piccolissima quantità, percioché nelle operazioni sue è potentissima, & io con questa medicina ho curate la lepra, l'hidropisia, il mal caduco, li morbilli pericolosi, il mal colico invecchiato, la goccia, il lupo, il cancro, le fistole: & ogni sorte de mali interni … e di ciò possono farne fede più provincie di Europa. Dunque per detta medicina il corpo si mondifica, & il mal del tutto si toglie dalla radice, & ogni superfluità si trasmuta in condizion migliore”: Imperato, Historia Naturale, 569.

36 Imperato, Historia Naturale, 572–81. The particular was based on various transmuting agents working only with specific base metals into gold, while the universal required the philosophers’ stone as the universal agent of transmutation being able to turn any metal into gold. See Lawrence Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 112–14.

37 Valentina Pugliano argued that sixteenth-century apothecary’s practice: “was not driven by radical experimentation but by a ‘culture of tweaking’ – of minute operational changes to existing recipes and accommodation of their textual variants – which was rooted in the guild economy fostering incremental over radical innovation and in a humanist reevaluation of past autorities.” Yet, she noticed that: “systematic attempts at innovation in institutional pharmacy seem to coincide with the affirmation of chemical remedies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.” Valentina Pugliano, “Pharmacy, Testing, and the Language of Truth in Renaissance Italy,” Bull. Hist. Med. 91 (2017): 233–73 (on 233, 252).

38 Very little is known about D’Eremita’s life, see Giuseppe Gabrieli, “Fra Donato D’Eremita Converso Domenicano Speziale,” Contributi alla Storia dell’Accademia dei Lincei, 2 vols. (Roma: Accademia dei Lincei, 1980), vol. 2, 1487–95 and Lorenza Gianfrancesco, “Alchemy and Religious Orders in Early Modern Naples,” Ambix 65 (2018): 250–74.

39 On the Casino di San Marco and the Fonderia, see Galluzzi, “Motivi paracelsiani”; Antonio Clericuzio, “Chemical Medicine,” 62; Marco Beretta, “Material and Temporal Powers at the Casino di San Marco (1574–1621),” in Laboratories of Art: Alchemy and Art Technology from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century, ed. Sven Dupré (Cham: Springer, 2014), 129–56; Georgiana Hedesan, “Alchemy and Paracelsianism at the Casino di San Marco in Florence. An Examination of La fonderia dell’Ill.mo et Ecc.mo Signor Don Antonio de’ Medici (1604),” Nuncius 37 (2022): 119–43; Stefano Mulas, “Translating Forbidden Authors: New Evidence on the Alchemical Library of Don Antonio de’ Medici,” Ambix, 71 (2024): 172–90.

40 Fra Donato D’Eremita, Dell’Elixir Vitae (Napoli: Secondino Roncagliolo, 1624), 4.

41 Antidotario di fra Donato d’Eremita dell'ordine de Predicatori (Napoli: Secondino Roncagliolo, 1639), 20–29, 72–74, 88, 94–135. The Antidotario was meant to comprise four books, the last one dealing with distillation, yet only book one saw the light. Fra Donato ruled out the doctrine of signature and astrological medicine, which he associated with Arnaldo da Villanova, Paracelsus and Leonhard Thurneysser (Antidotario, 8).

42 See Thomas Bartholin, Epistolae Medicinales (Copenhagen, 1663), 202. There is no evidence to assess what Castelli’s role was in the production of the two books in question. See Gabrieli, Contributi, vol. 2, 1495. Quinzio Bongiovanni adopted Telesio’s doctrines; see Conforti, Medicina, 69, 139.

43 Giulio Jasolino, De rimedi naturali che sono nell’isola di Pithecusa; hoggi detta Ischia (Napoli: Giuseppe Cacchij, 1588), 167–72, 184–85. On Jasolino, see Conforti, Subterranean Fires and Chemical Exhalations. See also Paolo Buchner, Giulio Iasolino. Medico calabrese del Cinquecento che dette nuova vita ai bagni dell’isola d’Ischia (Milano: Rizzoli, 1958).

44 Gabrieli, Contributi, 1526. See “Tommaso Campanella to Marco Aurelio Severino, 6 January 1629,” in Tommaso Campanella, Lettere, ed. Germana Ernst (Firenze: Olschki, 2010), 315.

45 Francisco Hernandez, Rerum medicarum novae Hispaniae thesaurus […] (Roma: Mascardi, 1651), 894. On Schipani see Gabrieli, Contributi, 1523–29, and Sabina Brevaglieri, Natural desiderio di sapere (Rome: Viella, 2019), 227–31. Marco Aurelio Severino styled him: “vir in re medica aeque & in bonis literis excultissimus” (a man very knowledgeable in medicine as well as in good letters), Marco Aurelio Severino, De recondita abscessuum natura libri 7 (Napoli: O. Beltrami, 1632), 31; James Clifton, “Kunst- und Naturalien-Kammern of Seventeenth-century Naples: Johann Daniel Major's View from Germany,” in Gianfrancesco and Tarrant, The Science of Naples, 163–86 (on 170–71).

46 Avner Ben-Zaken, “From Naples to Goa and Back: A Secretive Galilean Messenger and a Radical Hermeneutist,” History of Science 47 (2009): 147–74: https://doi.org/10.1177/007327530904700202 (accessed 4 January 2024); Margherita Farina, “Uno scambio epistolare fra Mario Schepani e Giovanni Battista Raimondi: lo studio della lingua araba nel tardo rinascimento, interesse scientifico e curiosità,” Egitto e Vicino Oriente 36 (2013): 63–72: http://www.jstor.org/stable/24233606 (accessed 4 January 2024); Giuseppe Donzelli, Antidotario Napolitano di nuovo riformato, e corretto. Dall'almo Collegio de Spetiali (Napoli: Francesco Savio, 1642), 177–78. Donzelli’s Antidotario was meant to replace Pietro Paolo Fenice, Antidotarium Petri Pauli Phoenicis (Napoli: Ottavio Beltrano, 1631), which the Guild of Apothecaries rejected as “pieno di errori” (filled with mistakes); see Donzelli, “Preface to the Readers,” sig. a3r.

47 Gentilcore, Healers and Healing, 11.

48 Compendio di Gieronimo Chiaramonte … Del suo elixir vitae ridotto in polvere cineritia (Napoli: Secondino Roncagliolo, 1633), 21–32, including the testimony of patients he successfully treated with the Elixir in Naples. Chiaramonte performed his alchemical therapy in Florence, Modena and Genoa.

49 Relatione dell’esperienze publicamente fatte della polvere, seu elixir vitae. Da Geronimo Chiaramonte siciliano nel sacro hospidale della Santissima Annuntiata di Napoli. In persona di 15 ammalati di diverse infermità gravi, mortali, & disperati, di varie complessioni ed età (Napoli: Gargano & Nucci, 1620). Chiaramonte provided detailed accounts of his patients, noting their age, sex, and diseases.

50 “Causa probabile di tali effetti, è la qualità, facoltà ignea, che in sé ritiene, & una certa sostanza talmente sottile, separata da ogni impurità, che con la sottigliezza sua può penetrare tutte le parti del nostro corpo, & con la sua virtù & facoltà ignea, acquistata per mezzo dell’arte, ha la forza, & virtù di purgar’ogni cattivo umore, & estirparlo dal corpo,” Breve discorso della natura, facoltà et effetti mirabili dell'elixir vitae di Geronimo Chiaramonte siciliano della città di Lentini. Raccolto ad universal benefitio da d. Giason' Antonio Bianchi (Napoli: Gargano & Nucci, 1619), 13.

51 Members of the Incauti came from professionals, lawyers and physicians; see Gianfrancesco, “From Propaganda to Science,” 7, 16–17; Filippo Finella, Soliloquium salium (Napoli: Giacomo Gaffaro, 1649). For Finella, see Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 8 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), 457–60, 465 and Antonella Pagano “Finella,” DBI, vol. 48, 28–30.

52 Very little is known about Andrea Fodio Gambara. He was born in 1588 and was known as a student of Stigliola, for whom he worked as amanuensis: see letters from Fabio Colonna to Francesco Stelluti of 9 June 1623, 8 September 1628, 12 May 1629, and of Johannes Faber to Federico Cesi, 20 April 1624, in Gabrieli, Carteggio Linceo, 806, 869, 1178 and 1198. Andrea Fodio Gambara’s only published work is entitled Camaleonte Antipodagric: discorso enciclopedico di Andrea Fodio Gambara alla Sacra Cattolica Maestà di Filippo IV il grande (Napoli: Ettore Cicconio, 1651). In the preface to the reader (dedicated to the Lincei), written by one Agostino Cenami, we read that Fodio treated gout with his chemical therapy for forty-five years. Fodio styled Campanella “a friend of mine” and endorsed his philosophy of nature (Camaleonte Antipodagrico, 44–45). See Massimo Rinaldi, “Enciclopedismo, alchimia e suggestioni campanelliane in un allievo di Colantonio Stigliola: Andrea Fodio Gambara,” Atti dell’Accademia Pontaniana 46 (1997): 131–45.

53 Fodio endorsed Fabre’s critique of Paracelsus’s homunculus. Fodio Gambara, Camaleonte, 52–54. See Pierre-Jean Fabre, Palladium spagyricum (Tolosae: apud Petrum Bosc, 1624), 259.

54 Fodio Gambara, Camaleonte, 27–28.

55 Donzelli, Antidotario napolitano, 47, 54, 160, 217, 243. See Joseph Duchesne, Pharmacopoea Dogmaticorum Restituta. Pretiosis selectisque Hermeticorum floribus abunde illustrata (Paris: Claude Morel, 1607). For Duchesne, see Didier Kahn, Alchimie et Paracelsisme en France à la fin de la Renaissance (1567–1625) (Geneva: Droz, 2007), 233–51 et seq.

56 Parere dell’almo Collegio de’ Spetiali di Napoli sopra l’opobalsamo mandatoli dalli signori consoli del Collegio de’ Spetiali di Roma. Con un picciolo trattato dell'opobalsamo orientale di Gioseppe Donzelli (Napoli: Francesco Savio, 1640). Donzelli’s tract bears the title of Synopsis de opobalsamo orientali; Giuseppe Donzelli, Additio apologetica ad suam de opobalsamo orientali synopsim (Napoli: Ottavio Beltrano, 1640). The eulogy of chemistry is in Giuseppe Donzelli, Lettera familiare […] sopra l’Opobalsamo orientale (Padova: Paolo Frambotti, 1643), sig. [CC 2]r-v. On the dispute over opobalsam and the recipes for Theriac, see Pugliano, “Pharmacy.”

57 See Salvatore De Renzi, Napoli nell’anno 1656 (Napoli: Di Pascale, 1867) and Silvana D’Alessio, “Some Effects of the Plague on Medicine in Naples: The Choices and Dialogue among the Novatores”, in The Science of Naples, ed. Gianfrancesco and Tarrant, 131–60.

58 For Severino’s life and works see the printer’s (i.e. Giovanni Alberto Tarino) “Vitae Authoris Synopsis” in Marco Aurelio Severino, Antiperipatias (Napoli: eredi di Camillo Cavallo e Giovanni Alberto Tarino, 1659), n.p.; Charles Schmitt and Charles Webster, “Harvey and M.A. Severino: A Neglected Medical Relationship,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 45 (1971),: 49–75 and Oreste Trabucco, “Severino,” DBI, vol. 92, 359–63.

59 Marco Aurelio Severino, Vipera Pythia (Padova: Frambottus, 1650), 187. As attested by Campanella’s letter to Severino of 1629, the latter publicly espoused Campanellan philosophy; see Campanella, Lettere, 315. Severino styled Campanella as the “new Timaeus” and “our Hippocrates of Stilo” (Severino, Vipera Pythia, 384–85), Stilo being Campanella’s birthplace. In Antiperipatias, a work on fish respiration, he endorsed Campanella’s views on respiration, see Severino, Antiperipatias, 21.

60 “Tho. Campanella mihi perhibuerit saepe, plus ex opificibus artium se didicisse, quam ex plerisque libris,” Marco Aurelio Severino, Biblioteca Lancisiana, MS Severino 24, fol. 142r, quoted in Maria Conforti, “Surgery, Medicine and Natural Philosophy in the Library of Marco Aurelio Severino (1580–1656),” Bruniana & Campanelliana 10 (2004): 283–98 (on 298). For Campanella’s view of the mechanical arts, see Phyllis A. Hall, “The Appreciation of Technology in Campanella's The City of the Sun,” Technology and Culture 34 (1993): 613–28.

61 Oreste Trabucco, “Tra Napoli e l'Europa: le relazioni scientifiche di Marco Aurelio Severino,” Giornale critico della filosofia italiana 74 (1995): 309–40. Schmitt and Webster, “Harvey and M.A. Severino,’ 62–63 stressed the similarity between Harvey’s and Severino’s programmes, namely the close link they established between comparative anatomy and physiology. Besides sharing relevant aspects of Harvey’s circulation physiology, Severino took up Campanella’s physiological ideas, notably the view that fish take air from water as they need it for the production of vital spirits; see Tommaso Campanella, “Physiologia, Quaestio 50: De respiratione,” Disputationum […] sive Philosophia realis Libri quatuor (Paris: D. Houyssaye, 1637), 480–87.

62 Pietro Castelli, Epistolae medicinales (Roma: Mascardi, 1626), 139.

63 Castelli to Severino, 20 May 1629, in Oreste Trabucco, “La corrispondenza tra Pietro Castelli e Marco Aurelio Severino,” in Filosofia e scienze nella Sicilia dei secoli xvi e xvii, ed. Corrado Dollo (Palermo-Catania: Regione Siciliana, 1996), 109–36, 112. For Castelli’s relationships with the Neapolitan savants, see Gabrielli, Carteggio linceo, 1111 and Trabucco and Ottaviani, Theatrum naturae, 92. For Severinus’s library see Maria Conforti, “Entre bibliothèque idéale et bibliothèque réelle: le cas de Marco Aurelio Severino,” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome. Antiquité 120, no. 2 (2008): 445–52.

64 Marco Aurelio Severino, Zootomia Democritea (Noribergae: Literis Endterianis, 1645), 38. See Christoph Lüthy, “The Fourfold Democritus on the Stage of Early Modern Science,” Isis 91 (2000): 443–79 (on 467–70).

65 Severino, De efficaci medicina (Frankfurt: Beyer, 1646), 16: “Porro maiorum nostrorum memoria extitit, Theophrastus Paracelsus, vir Germanus ingenio libero vastoque … .”

66 Severino, Zootomia, 17–18, 38. For Sørensen, see Jole Shackelford, A Philosophical Path for Paracelsian Medicine: The Ideas, Intellectual Context, and Influence of Petrus Severinus, 1540–1602 (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2004).

67 Marco Aurelio Severino, De efficaci medicina, 16–18.

68 Severino, Vipera Pythia, 439, 461. An early referrence to chemical remedies, including those containing mercury, is to be found in Marco Aurelio Severino, De recondita abscessum natura (Napoli: Ottavio Beltrano, 1632), 125–26, referring to Oswald Croll and Jean Beguin.

69 “ … qui adscribunt medicinis scientiam & predestinationem singularem, qua non agant nisi inveniant in homine inimicum, sicut nec magnes attrahit, ubi non est ferrum,” Severino, Vipera Pythia, 395. For Libavius’s objections to Sørensen, see Bruce T. Moran, Andreas Libavius and the Transformation of Alchemy (Sagamore Beach: Science History Publications, 2007).

70 Severino, Zootomia, 214–15. For Severino’s view of spirits, see Severino, Vipera Pythia, 352–53.

71 “Haec nos destillationis exemplaria, qae promptius occurrerunt in animalis fabrica, recitavimus, non dubitantes, alias esse multas, quas nunc non licet omnes persequi commode.” Severino, Zootomia, 216.

72 Severino, Vipera Pythia, 353–55.

73 Severino, Vipera Pythia, 82.

74 Severino, Vipera Pythia, 354.

75 Cassiano provided Severino with numerous medical and chemical books, including William Davidson’s Philosophia Pyrotechnica (1635). See letters of Severino to Cassiano dal Pozzo, Roma, Bibl. Corsiniana, Archivio dal Pozzo, ms xxxix, fols. 7v and 17r–v, 116r. See Trabucco, Scienza e comunicazione epistolare, 217–18. On Campanella and van Helmont see Walter Pagel, Jan Baptista van Helmont (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 159–160.

76 For Tachenius, see Heinz-Herbert Take, Otto Tachenius, 1610–1680. Ein Wegbereiter der Chemie zwischen Herford und Venedig (Bielefeld: Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, 2002). In 1650 Tachenius collaborated with Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont (who lodged with him in Venice for one month) for editing the second edition of the Ortus Medicinae, which saw the light in 1651 in Venice. See Tachenius, Epistola de famoso liquore Alkahest, 1652, preface.

77 Very little is known about Capucci’s life. The entry for the DBI provides scarce information. He joined the Accademia degli investiganti and corresponded with Marcello Malpighi. An early reference to his collaboration with Severino is to be found in Capucci’s letter to a certain Giovanni Simone De Gratia, dated January 9 1642, published in the second edition of Marco Aurelio Severino, De abscessum recondita natura (Lugduni Batavorum: apud Joannem à Kerckhem, 1724), 155–60.

78 Severino, Zootomia, ‘Praefatio’, sig. [***1]r. The preface is signed JGVMD, which stands for Johann Georg Volkamer Medicinae Doctor.

79 Severino, Vipera Pythia, 511–13. On Paracelsus’s toxicology, see Georgiana D. Hedesan, “Alchemy, Potency, Imagination: Paracelsus’s Theories of Poison,” in “It All Depends on the Dose” Poisons and Medicines in European History, ed. Ole Peter Grell, Andrew Cunningham and Jon Arrizabalaga (London: Routledge, 2018), 81–102.

80 Guiseppe Donzelli, Partenope liberata (Napoli: Ottavio Beltrano, 1647); Pietro Messina, “Giuseppe Donzelli e la rivoluzione napoletana del 1647-1648,” Studi Storici, 28 (1987): 183–202; Conforti, Medicine, History and Religion.

81 Giuseppe Donzelli, Petitorio Napolitano (Napoli: Novello De Bonis, 1663), 8–10.

82 Donzelli, Petitorio Napolitano, 61–63.

83 Giuseppe Donzelli, Teatro farmaceutico dogmatico e spagirico […] nel quale s’insegnano una molteplicità di arcani chimici […] aggiuntovi […] un catalogo de i santi medici (Napoli: Giacinto Passaro, 1667), sig. a1r–a4r.

84 For the chemical Theriac, see Donzelli, Teatro, 309, relying on Pierre-Jean Fabre, Myrothecium spagyricum, sive Pharmacopoea chymica (Toulouse: Pierre Bosc, 1628), 347–50.

85 Donzelli, Teatro, 495–99.

86 Donzelli, Teatro, 451–52. For Paracelsus, who did not reveal the recipe, the elixir proprietatis would preserve human blood from corruption and cure fevers; see Jean Baptiste van Helmont, Ortus medicinae (Amsterdam: Ludovicum Elzevirium, 1648), 799. Van Helmont’s elixir proprietatis gained currency in the second half of the seventeenth century. For the recipe, see James R. Partington, History of Chemistry, vol. 2 (London: Macmillan, 1961), 300. Donzelli wrote that Sebastiano Bartoli employed this remedy very often, though he slightly modified the recipe by introducing spirit of wine, Donzelli, Teatro, 453.

87 Donzelli, Teatro, 8–18, 26.

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Antonio Clericuzio

Antonio Clericuzio is professor of History of Science at Roma Tre. He has published extensively on Boyle and on corpuscular philosophy and chemistry. He is currently working on a book on chemistry and medicine in early modern Italy. Email: [email protected]