Les médecins du Tibre

Abstract

From the 1550’s onward, the Tiber increasingly became a topic for discussion in Roman medical debates. In treatises published in the city, several physicians were highly interested in the quality and composition of the river’s drinking water as well as its tendency to periodic flooding. Doctors engaged in a dialogue with the papal and municipal authorities who were responsible for projects aimed at intervening in the riverbed or at supplying the city’s drinking water. The article focuses on the role physicians played in these debates which involved urban and public policies and a medical culture that emphasized the relationship between humans and their natural environment.

Keywords

• Tiber
• Rome
• physicians
• natural history
• rivers
• hippocratism