science and medicine in early modern venice 733
[ compendium of rational Secrets], which came out in 1564. With a dozen
16th- and 17th-century editions, it became one of the most popular scien-
tific books of the age.
Fioravanti’s Compendium is a rich compilation of artisanal techniques
and lore. it is also completely down-to-earth and devoid of any concern
with using alchemy to reach a higher reality or purpose, let alone gold-
making. From the Compendium and similar books, readers could learn
everything from how to distill perfumes and oils to sweeten the body
and chamber to making glue and varnish to repair furniture. They would
discover secrets for augmenting the larder, too, including instructions for
grafting fruit trees and increasing the yield of the garden, preserving fruits
and vegetables through the year, and making mustard, condiments, and
cheese. leonardo revealed the secret of alloying silver and gold in order to
make them more malleable; how to make metal for forging cannons; and
how to make fireworks for celebrations and military offensives, including
an “infernal fire” that produces “the most diabolical fire ever imagined.”92
The scientific underworld of early modern Venice also extended to the
piazzas, where charlatans sold their medical wares and demonstrated
their “experiments” to the crowds gathered around.93 charlatans distilled
herbs to make salves and drugs, fashioned “curiosities” for collectors’ cabi-
nets, and performed tricks with brilliantly glowing phosphors.94 no firm
lines can be drawn between the medical and cosmetic products that char-
latans concocted in their home laboratories and peddled in the piazzas
and those prescribed by physicians and sold in the pharmacies.
charlatans also brought the world of exotica to the people. Tommaso
Garzoni recounted that charlatans exhibited monkeys, Meer cats, mar-
mots, and camels to attract curious bystanders.95 like roving natural his-
tory cabinets, the mini-zoos that charlatans paraded on the piazzas gave
ordinary people their first look at exotic animals from distant parts of
the world.
92 Fioravanti, Compendio, pp. 87, 100, 90v, 112v, 117v. For the wider context of books of
secrets, see eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature.
93 eamon, “Markets, Piazzas, and Villages.”
94 on fashioning curiosities, see Paula Findlen, “inventing nature: commerce, Science,
and art in the early Modern cabinet of curiosities,” in Pamela H. Smith and Paula Findlen,
eds., Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe (new
york, 2001), pp. 297–323.
95 Quoted in M. a. Katritzky, “Marketing Medicine: The image of the early Modern
Mountebank,” Renaissance Studies 15 (2001), 121.