Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/520

 CHAPTER XXXVII

THE DEVELOPMENT OF SURGERY IN ITALY DURING THE RENAISSANCE

During the latter part of the fifteenth, all of the sixteenth and the early part of the seventeenth centuries quite a large number of Italian surgeons attained honorable distinction by the contributions which they made to the science of medicine; and even in the neighboring Latin countries of Spain and Portugal,—countries in which the force of the revival of all departments of learning had made itself felt to a much feebler degree, and in which at the same time the opposition to such revival was much more active,—several surgeons succeeded in winning creditable places for themselves in the history of their art. The names of the Italian surgeons are as follows: Giovanni da Vigo, Bartolommeo Maggi, Marianus Sanctus, Fallopius, Carcano Leone, Fabricius ab Acquapendente, Aranzi and Tagliacozzi. I will now add brief notices of the careers of all these men, in order to convey at least some idea of the grounds upon which their claim to honorable distinction rests.

Giovanni da Vigo—perhaps more frequently referred to in literature by the French form of his name, "Jean de Vigo"—was born at Rapallo, near Genoa, Italy, about the year 1460. He was the son of Bernardo di Rapallo, who was also a surgeon; and he himself was the founder of a school which sent out quite a number of practical surgeons. In 1485 he began the practice of his profession at Saluzzo, a small town about forty miles south of Turin; and ten years later he settled at Savona, which is located on the Mediterranean, a short distance to the west of Genoa. In 1503 he was chosen the personal physician of Cardinal