ABSTRACT
Medical knowledge was being stimulated enormously by Andreas Vesalius’ description of the true structure of the human body. The “theoretical” disciplines naturally acquired deep importance for both internal medicine and surgery. The potentialities of blood transfusion drew serious attention when Harvey’s discovery of circulation opened up a view of human physiology. Experiments were originally made by using animals. Besides the principle of exhaustion, two other brands of medical science flourished during the seventeenth century: iatrophysicsand iatrochem-istry. Leonardo Botallo played, in addition, an active role in the contemporary controversies about surgery. Blood-letting was an excellent source of income for seventeenth-century surgeons, who were commonly far from free of economic worries. Blood-letting is one of the simplest of all operations. The idea of using blood from a healthy person to transfer youth and vitality to an old or sick one is very ancient. It existed in Egyptian medicine as early as two thousand years before Christ.
