An eyewitness account of the retreat from Italy of Charles VIII of France in 1495, written by a physician of Verona, who was chief surgeon of the Venetian troops in the campaign. Although the book is not written primarily from the medical standpoint, it exemplifies a physician’s eye for detail and provides information about health conditions and diseases prevailing in the camps of the French troops.

This is probably the first published narrative written by a physician that concerns military history and military medicine of the Renaissance. Notably, it was relatively current information, being published one year after the retreat.

ISTC No. ib00320400. Digital facsimile from Bayerische Staatsbibliothek at this link.

 "... a descriptive anatomy in the style of Mundinus. It concludes with a final chapter on the praise of dissection. He expresses the need for a clinical examination rather than uncritical trust in the authorities “since in it we see the truth and contemplate its revelations as the works of nature lie under our eyes… but those who trust only the monuments of literature… are often deceived and entrust opinion rather than truth to their minds.”^[1] He later describes a postmortem examination of a woman who had died of syphilis and the disease’s effects on her bones.^[2] Benedetti critiqued those anatomists who trusted in the authorities more than their own experience: “Aristotle has had so much authority for so many centuries that even those things which [physicians] have not seen they will affirm to exist, even without experiment.”^[3] Benedetti valued personal observation over blind trust in the authorities and even, shockingly for the time, corrected Aristotle. “Aristotle believes that the nerves first arise from the heart… but almost all of them (as is more evidently established) are perceived to originate in large part from the brain….”^[4]  (Wikipedia article on Alessandro Benedetti, accessed 5-2020). 

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Latin text with parallel English translation.

Includes  English translations of texts by Alessandro Achillini, Alessandro Benedetti, Berengario da Carpi, Gabriele Zerbi, Niccolo Massa, Andrés de Laguna, J. Dryander and G. B. Canano.