Giorgio Baglivi: an Advocate of Prudence in Healing

Abstract

Giorgio Baglivi's name is usually connected to the Iatromechanic approach but the medical theoy outlined in his major work, De Praxi Medica, denounces how deeply he was influenced by hippocratic tradition and minly by the holistic approach to therapeutics centered on the idea of an inborn healing power of the body. It is proposed that the contraddiciton was avoided by Baglivi simply assuming the preminence and autonomy of the clinical point of view in fornt of the biological research to which he attached great theoretical interest but little therapeutical relevance.