Catalogo della mostra "Testi antichi di medicina e filosofia della Biblioteca degli Intronati di Siena"

This exhibition of ancient books of medicine and philosophy had the purpose of making available to the public part of the rich heritage of the Municipal Library of Intronati of Siena and testifies to the widespread interest of the authors who were the subject of this conference’s papers. For example: for philosophy, certain volumes of Plato and Aristotle were displayed, and for medicine, those of Hippocrates and Galen. These were accompanied by texts of great Arab physicians, such as Averroes, the famous commentator of Aristotle and Avicenna, who in his Canon collected the best knowledge of ancient Greek medicine. The exhibition covered a period of time ranging from the thirteenth century to 1779, the date of publication of a translation of De rerum natura of Lucretius, a noteworthy exponent of Epicureanism in Rome. This volume was chosen because of the obvious impossibility of displaying specimens of papyri from Herculaneum containing writings of the epicurean Philodemus of Gadara.