2004
Dimensions cm. 17 x 24
Paperback
Softback with flaps
ISBN 978-88-95642-03-1
pages 160,. 4 illustrations

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Leonardo Colapinto

QUANTO SIANO SALUTARI I BAGNI
sia per conservare la salute, sia per curare i morbi
(BATHS ARE SALUTARY: to maintain health and cure illness)


In the sixteenth century a handsome argument was made in favour of the notion of visiting spas when the physician, Giovanni Francesco Brancaleone, wrote the book Quanto siano salutari i bagni. Now Leonardo Colapinto, a well-known medical historian, has removed this book from its oblivion on the shelves of the Vatican Library.
The work discusses the need to test the new boundaries of science in a wish to reconcile tradition and modernity. It reassesses a very ancient but still current method of healthcare and compares it to the exaggerated use of drugs, purges in particular.
A convinced proponent of the benefits of thermal baths, Brancaleone praised hydrotherapy not only for reasons of hygiene but also and above all because of his conviction that it is an excellent way to keep one's health and cure illnesses.


Leonardo Colapinto, is the President Emeritus and member of the Nobile Collegio Chimico Farmaceutico Romano, and a lecturer in the History of Medicine at La Sapienza University in Rome.