Indice degli autori

Abstract: Notes on the medical profession in Rome: the role of the medical college at the end of the fifteenth century A professional organization of doctors must certainly have existed in Rome — as in many other cities — during the Middle Ages. But is only during the fifteenth century that it began to be documented in a significant fashion. This was particularly so after 1471, when Sixtus IV’s bull placed the profession under the control of the City College of doctors. Several documents, until now unpublished — published here in the essay’s appendix — have made it possible to reconstruct the College’s activity and jurisdiction at the end of the fifteenth century and compare them to the regulations present in the corporative articles of 1531, the first extant draft. It has therefore been possible to establish that already in the years following 1471, the members of the College, and especially the Chief physician, exercised control over scholastic preparation with the authority to issue degrees in medicine as well as the possibility verifying the competence of doctors, surgeons (Christian and Hebrew), barbers, apothecaries in their practice of the medical and health-care professions. It was also possible to conduct a study of another important function of the Medical College, that of judiciary, entrusted to the Chief physician’s court. It had the authority to resolve controversies between doctors, between doctors and patients and to disqualify from practicing medicine anyone lacking the relevant «licence».