Etica del silenzio, disciplina della parola e un verso di Virgilio nella medicina del Seicento

In a famous verse in the Aeneid, Virgil includes medicine among the silent arts,and qualifies those who practise it as inglorious. That verse has long been usedby early modern antimedical polemists to criticize the rhetorical abuses of physicians and underline the fraudulent nature of their knowledge. Although the exe - getic history of this Virgilian verse has been studied extensively, the way in which medical culture reacted to the wave of criticism it inaugurated has received little attention. In this paper, by presenting the different interpretations that emerged in European medical milieus between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, I intend to highlight the gradual emergence of strategies which reclaim the dignity of medicine by means of strict control over the use of the term as well as innovative uses of silence.[Publisher's text]