A Brief Illustrated History of Medicine – A Philatelic Presentationby Carmel Lino Cutajar, published by Progress Press, Malta
As a science, medicine has
In 1524 Pope Clement VII ordered a test of an antidote oil created by surgeon Gregorio Caravita. A test subject took a dose of poison in front of a small crowd of invited personages. In both of the antidote’s two trials, apothecaries provided the poison a good quantity of a deadly aconite called napellus in the first test, arsenic in the second. Although a pharmacist was present, the papal physician, Paolo Giovio, oversaw the trial. Pope Clement commanded that the antidote be tried on “condemned bodies, faithfully and diligently, for the benefit of the public.”
The use of condemned criminals as medical test subjects was new. We are lucky to have a firsthand account of the test of Caravita’s oil from the point of view of the testers: the pamphlet put out in Pope Clement’s name and written by Giovio, the pharmacist Tomasso Bigliotti, and the senator Pietro Borghese. This document, which they called a