Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/521

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Giuliano della Rovere, who resided at Savona, and he continued to hold this position after the cardinal was elected to the papal office under the name of Julius the Second.

Da Vigo's great treatise on surgery ("Practica in arte chirurgica copiosa continens novem libros," Rome, 1514) owed its celebrity, during the early part of the sixteenth century, chiefly to the fact that he was the first author to write somewhat thoroughly upon syphilis and upon gunshot wounds—two surgical disorders of great importance at that time. As to gunshot wounds, da Vigo was one of the first to maintain that they were poisoned wounds; and for a long time afterward this was the generally accepted opinion. Like all his contemporaries, da Vigo was not willing to undertake such operations as those for the cure of stone in the bladder, for the relief of cataract, and for the cure of hernia. He left these, says Haeser, to the itinerant surgeons. But he gained well-merited credit by his employment of ligatures for the arrest of bleeding in a variety of conditions—not, however, in amputations, as he appears to have avoided cutting operations. According to the same authority, the circular pattern of trephine (the kind which the surgeons of the present day prefer) was first introduced by da Vigo. The following passage copied from his "Practica" shows that he was familiar with the use of the ear speculum: ". . . si ad solem speculo instrumento aure ampliata." Da Vigo died soon after 1517.

Bartolommeo Maggi, who was born at Bologna either in 1477 (Haeser) or in 1516 (von Gurlt), held the Chair of Anatomy and Surgery in the medical school of his native city, and then at a later date accepted the position of private physician to Pope Julius the Third (1550-1555). He held this position, however, only for a short time, as he found that the climate of Rome did not agree with him. His posthumous fame rests largely on the treatise which he wrote on gunshot wounds and which was published by his brother a short time after the former's death. His treatise, says von Gurlt, is one of the best of those which