Stimulus and Fibre Theory in Giorgio Baglivi’s Medicine: A Reassessment

In his seminal paper La notion de fibre vivante chez les médecins de l’école iatrophysique, Mirko Grmek has shown the pivotal role of Giorgio Baglivi in the early-modern debate on fibres. However, despite numerous studies on this issue, Baglivi’s work is still largely unexplored. Surprisingly enough, the crucial notion of ‘stimulus’, which Baglivi borrowed from Lorenzo Bellini and primarily employed in his experiences with poisons, has been completely neglected. In testing or treating well-known poisonous substances, such as those produced by tarantulas or cantharides, he realised that both therapeutic efficacy and drug regulation depend on the variety of stimuli exerted and on the parts of the body involved. This might explain, for instance, how diaphoretic medicaments are not as effective as music in treating tarantula bites, or what conditions make vesicants safe and useful. By exploring the notion of stimulus through his experiments on living animals, this paper will finally pay attention to Baglivi’s view of the role of animal experimentation in medicine.