he was careless with money, and his ex-
pensive tastes and desire for fine art and
spectacle drained the treasuries of both his
family and city. In addition, a backlash ar-
rived with Girolamo Savonarola, a fiery
Dominican monk who bitterly condemned
the lavish and decadent tastes of the Flo-
rentines and conducted public burnings of
art and books in the city’s central square.
After the death of Lorenzo, the truce
he had arranged among the city-states of
northern Italy soon gave way. The penin-
sula again fell into violent squabbling and
became prey to foreign rulers, including
the king of France, who invaded Italy in
- His son Giovanni was elected Pope
Leo X, and his nephew Giulio, the son of
Giuliano, was Pope Clement VII.
SEEALSO: Medici, Cosimo de’; Michelan-
gelo Buonarroti; Pazzi Conspiracy
medicine ..........................................
The practice of medicine in the early Re-
naissance was still bound by the study of
the ancient Greek doctors and writers, in
particular Hippocrates, Dioscorides, and
the second-century physician Galen. The
writings of Galen were the accepted teach-
ing in universities and sanctioned by the
Catholic Church, which held control
through the universities over the training
of professional doctors. Galen’s own ana-
tomical knowledge was limited, however,
by a prohibition on human dissection, a
practice still banned by the medieval
church. Thus the limitations of Galen’s
knowledge persisted for a thousand years
within Europe, even as the church held his
teachings to be infallible.
A new approach to knowledge and in-
vestigation of science bloomed in the Re-
naissance. Old methods and treatments
came under question. The German phi-
losopher Paracelsus was the son of a phy-
sician, and one of the most important fig-
ures of Renaissance medicine. He believed
that sickness resulted from imbalances of
essential minerals and chemicals in the
body, and prescribed medicines meant to
correct these imbalances. He also investi-
gated the action of poisons, and hit upon
the idea that a toxic substance, when ap-
plied in a limited dose, can cure the body
of illness. Paracelsus applied his theories
to the treatment of miners, who seemed to
have several dangerous illnesses in com-
mon that resulted from their occupation
and not from the state of their bodily hu-
mors (fluids) or their souls.
In the generation of Paracelsus, new
treatments for sickness and injuries were
developed, which bypassed many of the
old superstitions of the medieval age. The
French surgeon Ambroise Pare developed
the use of ligatures to close battlefield
wounds, a method intended to deter infec-
tion and avoid the complications caused
by sealing wounds with burning irons. Pare
set down his findings inMethod of Treat-
ing Wounds Inflicted by Arquebuses and
other Guns, which after its publication in
1545 became a standard medical textbook
for military doctors. For the majority of
the population, however, medical practice
still held to medieval traditions, and spiri-
tual healing was still the most common-
place approach to sickness. Barber/
surgeons set bones, pulled teeth, carried
out bloodlettings, and performed amputa-
tions of infected limbs. Ordinary medical
doctors still relied on the philosophy of
the four humors of the body (blood,
phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile) to di-
agnose illness and prescribe treatment.
Apothecaries and herbalists offered a wide
range of plant and animal products to ap-
ply or to ingest, mixtures designed to heal
disease through their sheer repulsiveness.medicine