The truth is, even the best of men had little or no appreciation of the importance of the study of these changes.

Sydenham scoffs at the value of post-mortems.
Again we have to go back to Italy for the beginning of these studies, this time to Florence, in the glorious days of Lorenzo the Magnificent.
The pioneer now is not a professor but a general practitioner, Antonio Benivieni, of whom we know very little save that he was a friend of Marsilio Ficino and of Angelo Poliziano, and that he practiced in Florence during the last third of the fifteenth century, dying in 1502.
Through associations with the scholars of the day, he had become a student of Greek medicine and he was not only a shrewd and accurate observer of nature but a bold and successful practitioner.

He had formed the good habit of making brief notes of his more important cases, and after his death these were found by his brother Jerome and published in 1507.( 2) This book has a rare value as the record of the experience of an unusually intelligent practitioner of the period.

There are in all 111 observations, most of them commendably brief.

The only one of any length deals with the new "Morbus Gallicus," of which, in the short period between its appearance and Benivieni's death, he had seen enough to leave a very accurate description; and it is interesting to note that even in those early days mercury was employed for its cure.