Il Mostro che Generò un’Idea

Francesco Maria Nigrisoli e Dionisio Andrea Sancassani: Il Valore del Confronto Medico nella Ferrara dei Sei-Settecento

Abstract

This article examines the intellectual relationship between Francesco Maria Nigrisoli (1648-1727) and Dionisio Andrea Sancassani (1659-1738), two physicians active in the Ferrara region during the 17th and 18th centuries, highlighting the role of scientific exchange in the development of medical theories. A particularly significant episode in their correspondence is Sancassani’s gift of a monstrous cat, which prompts Nigrisoli to revisit his reflections on the generation of monsters, previously addressed, twenty years earlier, in the Lettera a Gaudenzio Roberti (1690). The article explores the impact of Nigrisoli’s analytical method on Sancassani’s research, which, in his Ragionamento havuto privatamente in Comacchio […] sopra un mostro natovi li 4 Maggio 1707 (1707), encourages Nigrisoli to express his position on the origin of congenital disorders. This exchange culminated in the publication of the Considerazioni intorno alla generazione dei viventi e particolarmente dei mostri (1712), the most significant outcome of the dialogue between the two scholars.