ury, the
Papal Medical School begins to assume an importance in the history of
medicine which it was to continue to hold for the next two centuries.
After the refoundation of the Sapienza by Pope Alexander VI., and its
development under Pope Leo X., special care was taken and no expense
spared by their successors, to secure the greatest teachers in anatomy
in the world for the medical department of the Papal University. At
this time all the great physicians were distinguished for their
attainments in anatomy, somewhat as in the nineteenth century great
physicians obtained their prestige by original work in pathology. The
situations in the two centuries had much more in common than the
casual reader of history or even the ordinary student of medicine
would appreciate. The list of Papal Physicians, then, becomes to a
great extent the roll of the professors of anatomy at the Papal
University Medical School. The Popes of this period were wise enough
in their generation to realize that the men who devoted themselves to
original research in increasing the knowledge of the human body, were
also those likely to know most about the diseases of the body and
their treatment. These scientific anatomists, with the chastening
knowledge of the complexity of the human body before them, probably
made less claims to power to cure diseases than many an {216}
enthusiastic therapeutist of the time, who thought, as have
representatives of this specialty in every generation, that he has
many infallible remedies for the cure of disease, though subsequent
generations have not agreed with him.

The true significance of the lives of the men who occupied the post of
Papal Physician after this time will be best appreciated from our
treatment of them in the chapter on The Papal Medical School. It will
be sufficient here simply to recall the names of the distinguished men
who, besides being professors in the Papal Medical School, were the
medical advisers of the Popes.

The first and most important of the great Renaissance professors of
anatomy of the Roman Medical School who were also Papal Physicians was
Columbus. He had been Vesalius's assistant at Padua and later his
successor. He had lectured also at Bologna. When a special effort was
made to give prestige to the University of Pisa, he was tempted by
particularly liberal offers to become the professor of anatomy in that
city. It was from here, by still more generous patronage, that the
Popes