ime of Tycho-Brahe, the
Danish astronomer, at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Cecco
and another distinguished physician of the time, Dino de Garbo, became
involved in a public controversy, as the result of which Cecco was
denounced to the public authorities as undermining the basis of
government and virtually teaching anarchy, though it was called
heresy, and as a result of the bitter feud he suffered the penalty of
death by fire.

The last of the Papal Physicians connected with the Pontifical Court
at Avignon was almost as illustrious as any of his predecessors. He
was the well-known Joannes de Tornamira, who was the body physician to
Gregory XI. until that Pontiff brought the Papal Court back to Rome.
Then Tornamira became the chancellor of the University of Montpelier.
He wrote an introduction to the study of medicine, meant for the use
of students and young physicians, called a Clarificatorium, which,
{213} according to Puschmann's History of Medicine, was the most used
text-book of medicine during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
Besides this he wrote a long and important work On Fevers and the
Accidents of Fevers, in which he sums up all the medical knowledge of
the time on these subjects.

That the policy of the Popes did not change as regards the selection
of their physicians on their return from Avignon to Rome, is to be
seen from the physician of the Popes whose See was in both places.
This was the famous Francis of Siena, who is known best in history as
the intimate friend of Petrarch, and who was physician to Pope Gregory
XI. and to his successor, Urban VI. He had been a professor of
medicine at the University of Pisa, and by special invitation went to
fill the same position in the University of the Papal City, and became
at the same time the medical adviser of the Popes. His influence on
medicine was not very important, but he occupied a very prominent
position among the learned men of the time, and his personal prestige
did much to add to the dignity of the profession. In our own time, the
medical men who have been best known and whose membership in the
profession has added greatly to its popular estimation, have at times
not been distinguished for great things in medicine. Francis of Siena
was such a man, and the fact that he was medical adviser to the Popes
at the same time must be counted as an important factor in the
evolution of medical dignity.

One of the first writers on medica