Skills, Knowledge, and Status: The Career of an Early Modern Italian Surgeon

This article analyzes the career of Giovanni Battista Cortesi (1552-1643)-the son of a poor tailor who started his career as barber and steam bath attendant and became university professor at Bologna and Messina-and places it in the context of the profession of surgery in early modern Italy. The article investigates how a surgeon had to establish close relationships with universities, civic authorities, wealthy upper-class patients, hospitals as sites of clinical education and acquisition of manual skills, the printing industry and the book market, and students. Moreover, the article explores the fluidity of professional and cultural boundaries between learned and empirical knowledge from the perspective of a graduate surgeon who was not supposed to be. Finally, the article aims at describing the figure of the "graduate surgeon," typical of the Italian medical landscape.