Berengario da Carpi

Jacopo Berengario da Carpi (also known as Jacobus Berengarius Carpensis, Jacopo Barigazzi, Giacomo Berengario da Carpi or simply Carpus; c. 1460 – c. 1530) was an Italian physician. His book "Anatomia Carpi" published in 1535 made him the most important anatomist before Andreas Vesalius.

Jacopo Berengario da Carpi was the son of a surgeon. As a youth he assisted his father in surgical work, and his surgical skills became the basis of his later work as a physician. In his late teens, through the association of his family with Lionello Pio, Berengario came under the tutelage of the great humanist printer, Aldo Manuzio who came to Carpi to tutor Alberto III Pio, Prince of Carpi and apparently included Berengario in his instruction. In the 1480s, Berengario attended university in Bologna receiving his degree in medicine in 1489.

After obtaining his degree, Berengario returned to his father and assisted him with his surgery practice for a short time, but the influx of the "French disease" in 1494 provided Berengario with a chance to advance his career as a physician. Traveling to Rome, he treated several patients who suffered from the ailment. Judging by an admittedly one-sided account, his work in Rome was a mix of financial success and medical failure. As quoted in Lind's introduction to the Isagoge, Benvenuto Cellini provided a scathing account of Berengario's practice of treating syphilis with doses of mercury while charging "hundreds of crowns" paid in advance. Berengario apparently developed enough of a reputation that the Pope invited him into his service, but he turned down the offer and left Rome shortly thereafter.

Shortly after his work in Rome, he was appointed Maestro nello Studio at Bologna, a university whose faculty were only rarely foreign and then only when they were scholars of considerable reputations. Berengario’s reputation and personal connections with powerful patrons were indeed quite strong. In 1504, the Pope granted him Bolognese citizenship, and he was asked to treat distinguished patients on several occasions including Alessandro Soderini (relative of a Cardinal and part of the Medici family) in 1513 and Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino in 1517. Along with his reputation, Berengario increased his wealth becoming a collector of a variety of artworks including a Roman statue, a painting attributed to Raphael and a pair of vases by Cellini and eventually a house large enough to hold them all.

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