Ovidio Montalbani Explained

Honorific Prefix:Doctor of Medicine
Ovidio Montalbani
Birth Date:18 November 1601
Birth Place:Bologna, Papal States
Death Place:Bologna, Papal States
Nationality:Italian
Other Names:Giovanni Antonio Bumaldi
Spouse:
    Parents:Bartolomeo Montalbani and Giulia Montalbani (née Gibetti)
    Alma Mater:University of Bologna
    Doctoral Advisor:Vincenzo Montecalvi
    Bartolomeo Ambrosini
    Discipline:Physician, botanist, astronomer, astrologist
    Workplaces:University of Bologna
    Doctoral Students:Lorenzo Legati
    Influenced:Jean-François Séguier[1]
    Resting Place:San Francesco, Bologna

    Ovidio Montalbani (18 November 160120 September 1671), also known by his pseudonym Giovanni Antonio Bumaldi, was an Italian polymath. He was a professor of logic, mathematics, astronomy, and medicine at the University of Bologna.[2]

    Life

    Ovidio Montalbani studied philosophy with Vincenzo Montecalvi and medicine with the famous physician Bartolomeo Ambrosini. In 1625 at a very young age he became a lector at the University of Bologna, teaching first logic, then the theoretic medicine, mathematics and astronomy and later moral philosophy. In 1657, he became custodian of the Aldrovandi Museum - succeeding Bartolomeo Ambrosini, who had been custodian since 1642.[3] He was the doyen of the Collegio Medico of Bologna and its prior from 1664 onwards.[4]

    Montalbani was a member of several academies, including the Accademia dei Gelati (with the alias "l'Innestato"), the Accademia degli Indomiti (as "lo Stellato"), and the Accademia della Notte (as "il Rugiadoso").[2] He was also a member of the free-thinking Venetian Accademia degli Incogniti, as well as one of the founders of the Accademia dei Vespertini, which held its first Assemblies in his house.

    A politically involved citizen of the city of Bologna, he held several magistrates, such as those of the court of the merchant forum and Tribune of the Plebs. As a censor for the Bolognese Inquisition he was charged of reviewing the first edition of Galileo’s Complete Works, published in Bologna by Carlo Manolessi, in 1655–1656.

    He died in Bologna on 20 September 1671.

    Works

    Ovidio Montalbani was one of the most prolific polymaths of his day. Among his many publications can be found works on archaeology, linguistics, medicine and botany. In 1629 he was given the task of writing the Tacuino, a sort of annually produced astrological calendar for doctors indicating the best and worst days for blood-letting, purges and surgery. Montalbani often enriched this medical «almanac» with essays on subjects as diverse as the grafting of plants and the Bolognese and Lombard dialects. Montalbani's tacuinum of 1661, entitled, Antineotiologia, an attack on innovations in the practice of medicine, was harshly criticized by Marcello Malpighi and Giovanni Alfonso Borelli.[5]

    In his “De Illuminabili Lapide Bononiensi Epistola” (1634), Montalbani discussed the properties of the “Bologna stone” a piece of barium sulfate (baryte) found on Mount Paderno. Montalbani's treatise was one of the first studies on the subject of inorganic phosphorescence.[6] In 1668 Montalbani edited the previously unprinted Dendrologia by Ulisse Aldrovandi.[7]

    Montalbani published a number of scientific works under the pseudonym of Giovanni Antonio Bumaldi. Carl Peter Thunberg gave the name of Bumalda to a genus of Japanese plants.[8] [9]

    A close friend of Thomas Dempster, he pronounced his funeral oration, which was published in Bologna in 1626, a year after Dempster's death.[10]

    Montalbani is an ambivalent figure in the early seventeenth-century Scientific Revolution. While he was a proponent of empirical observation in natural philosophy, he was also a staunch opponent of Marcello Malpighi’s medical ideas and a proponent of the Ptolemaic system.

    Main works

    Aldrovandine

    Miscellaneous

    Bibliography

    External links

    Notes and References

    1. Book: Précis de l'histoire de la botanique pour servir de complément à l'étude du Règne végétal. L. Guérin. 1871. Paris. 99.
    2. Web site: Montalbanus, Ovidius. thesaurus.cerl.org. 2017-06-10.
    3. Book: Findlen, Paula . Possessing Nature. Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy . . 1994 . 9780520205086 . 25 . Paula Findlen.
    4. Exotic Plants in Italian Pharmacopoeia (16th -17th Centuries). Federica. Rotelli. Medicina Nei Secoli. Journal of History of Medicine and Medical Humanities. 30. 3. 2018. 854–855.
    5. Book: Minelli, Giuseppe. All'origine della biologia moderna: la vita di un testimone e protagonista: Marcello Malpighi nell'Università di Bologna. 1987. Jaca Book. 9788816402003. 71–72.
    6. .
    7. Book: Mattirolo, Oreste. Oreste Mattirolo. L'opera botanica di Ulisse Aldrovandi (1549-1605). Bologna. Regia tip., fratelli Merlani. 35–36.
    8. Encyclopedia: Montalbani (Ovide). Dictionaire des sciences médicales. Biographie médicale. 6. 289. 1824. Paris. C. L. F. Panckoucke.
    9. Book: Théis, Alexandre de. Glossaire de botanique ou Dictionnaire étymologique de tous les noms et termes relatifs à cette science. 1810. Paris. chez Gabriel Dufour et Compagnie. 74.
    10. Book: Montalbani, Ovidio. Ragionamento funebre nella morte dell'Eccellmo Tomaso Dempstero. 1626. Bologna. G. Mascheroni.
    11. Book: Frodin, D. G.. Guide to Standard Floras of the World An Annotated, Geographically Arranged Systematic Bibliography of the Principal Floras, Enumerations, Checklists and Chorological Atlases of Different Areas. David Gamman Frodin. 2001. Cambridge University Press. 9781139428651. 4.

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