Marcello Donati

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Marcello Donati , Latinized Marcellus Donatus , Count of Ponzano, (* 1538 in Mantua ; † June 8, 1602 ibid) was an Italian humanist, politician and physician.

Life

Donati, whose father was a silversmith and whose mother was the daughter of the famous physician Pietro Pomponazzi, studied in Padua and received his doctorate in medicine and philosophy in 1560. He was then a doctor (from 1560 in the medical college) and humanist in Mantua and in 1576 and 1599 rector of the Accademia degli Invaghiti , to which he had belonged since 1567. Donati was known for his great botanical knowledge, especially when it came to medicinal plants. He is the author of De medica historia mirabili libri sex (Mantua 1586), a collection of medical cases and anatomical observations, by himself and from literature. In it he was a forerunner of later such case collections, especially by Giovanni Battista Morgagni in the 18th century. He was the first to describe a stomach ulcer and Quincke's edema .

He enjoyed a great reputation at the court in Mantua, also in political matters, and was the best known doctor in Mantua in the 16th century, of which a biography by LF Castellani appeared in 1788. He had a comprehensive classical education (besides Greek and Latin, he could also speak Spanish and French) and for this reason became Vincenzo Gonzaga's tutor and his secretary from 1577. In 1587 he became a count, and when Vincenzo Gonzaga took over the government in the same year, he was Secretary of State (Consigliere di Stato). In 1589 the Grand Duke of Tuscany made him Knight of San Stefano. He built up an extensive art collection. He left a large part of the ducal family of Mantua. His extensive library went to his nephew, who was a doctor in Correggio .

In 1569 he married Cecilia Laziosi, 30 years his senior, widow of court doctor Giovan Maria Facini at the Duke of Mantua, a position that Donati soon got.

Fonts

  • De variolis et morbillis tractatus, Mantua 1569 (on the occasion of a smallpox epidemic in Mantua)
  • De radice purgante quam Mechiocan vocant, appendix to De variolis ... , 1569
  • De medica historia mirabili, Mantua 1586

literature

  • A. Zanca, Notie sulla vite e sulle opere di Marcello Donati da Mantova (1538–1602), medico, umanista, uomo di stato, Pisa 1964
  • Sonia Pellizzer, entry in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani , 1992, volume 41, Treccani
  • LF Castellani: Vita del celebre medico mantovano Marcello Donati, Mantua 1788
  • Guido Rebecchini: Private Collectors in Mantua 1500-1630, Rome 2002, pp. 185ff

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Archives
  2. S. Pellizzer, Dictionnaire Biogr. Italiani