Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 270

GIOVANNI FILIPPO INGRASSIA (1510-1580) Quaestio de purgatione per medicamentum. . . . Illustrissimi ducis Terraenovae casus enarratio. . . . Quaestio utrum victus. Sumptibus Angeli Patessii 1568 Pt. I: [8] 112 pp.; Pt. II: 68 pp.; Pt. III: 101 pp.; Pt. IV: 50 pp. (the 4 pts. bound in different order from that given on title page). 18.7 cm.

Ingrassia, 'the Sicilian Hippocrates', a graduate of Padua, was a celebrated teacher of anatomy and medicine at Naples. . . . He discovered the stapes, and the lesser wings of the sphenoid are still called the processes of Ingrassias [sic] (Osler 3052). He also gave the first descriptions of scarlet fever and chicken pox. In this collection of lesser works of Ingrassia appears the transcript of a letter from Vesalius to Ingrassia, a rare and little-known piece of Vesaliana which indicates that Vesalius was ahead of his time in surgical as well as in anatomical knowledge. During the spring of 1562, John, Duke of Terranova, suffered a penetrating wound of the left chest during a tournament. Under the care of Ingrassia, he failed to respond to treatment and developed a fistula with empyema. Ingrassia sought help and about eight months later Vesalius wrote a long letter of advice ("Consilium pro fistula"), in itself a treatise on his manner of therapy in empyema. In this letter, dated from Madrid, Christmas, 1562, he gives in detail the steps in the procedure, using surgical drainage instead of the usual cauterization. The patient recovered.

Cited references: Cushing I13; Cushing Vesalius VIII.-C; Durling 2549; Garrison-Morton 3164; Waller 5070

Gift of John Martin, M.D.