ABSTRACT
In Italy the conflicts were less violent: in cultural fields the Renaissance pivoted on men like Machiavelli and Guicciardini, profound historians and politicians of their age, whose writings reflect its characteristic shortcomings as well as its virtues. Thus Andrea Cesalpino deserves an eminent position in the renaissance of medicine, even though he may have been somewhat neglected by his contemporaries and his successors. The first Renaissance book on the surgery of the eye was written by georgbartisch, a skilful and fortunate peripatetic operator who was the oculist of August of Saxony. In Pietro Andrea mattioli Commentary on Dioscorides, which can be regarded as an encyclopaedia of Renaissance pharmacology, he collected the results of his long-continued observations and careful studies. The observation of Nature, which is one of the most important gifts of Humanism to the Renaissance, found its widest application in the study of anatomy, physiology, and chemistry.
