ABSTRACT
Lionardo Di Capoa’s Parere is just that: an opinion in response to a specific request by the Viceroy and the Consiglio Collaterale in 1678 put to a group of prominent Neapolitans for counsel on a legal regulatory policy; at the behest of his friends it was expanded for publication in 1681, then revised in 1689. The form of the lengthy published version is, simply, a history of medicine, divided into eight Ragionamenti; the first six dwell primarily on the frailty of medical theory and practice, the last two suggest a positive programme of reform to the Viceroy. For, the generic difficulty of inquiry as a whole is academicism. He begins Ragionamento IV by refusing to lament the loss of so many classical texts: if the books that were lost were anything like the ones saved, there is small loss.
