Benedetto Reguardati: author of Ugo Benzi's "Tractato de la Conservatione de la Sanitade".

THE Tractato utilissimo circa la conservatione de la sanitade is described by D. P. Lockwood1 as 'one of the earliest Italian medical works in the vernacular' to which 'Ugo now owes his chief distinction in the history of medicine'. No manuscript of this treatise exists, it was not mentioned in the Latin Vita Ugonis written about 1441 by his eldest son Soccino Benzi (1406-79), also a physician, or in any contemporary documents. The attribution derives from the first printed edition, Pietro de Corneno, Milan, 31 May 1481, in 8vo, the earliest dated work by Benzi. It was printed four times, the second edition also at Milan, 12 May 1508 in 8vo by a different printer, Pietro Martire Mantegazza, working for Niccolo da Gorgonzola whose name appears on the colophon and his device on the lower title.2 According to Lockwood (p. 398) this is the only copy surviving outside Italy where there are three other copies: in the Palatina at Florence, in the Brera at Milan and in the Comunale at Piacenza. Mazzuchelli (II, II, p. 792) does not mention the 1508 edition, but refers to an earlier 1507 reprint (ristampa) of the first (1481) edition by Gotardo da Ponte, at Milan, mentioned also by Haym in the posthumous editions, by Panzer and by Sarton, who again describes it as a reprint. All these references however seem to derive from Mazzuchelli. If indeed the 1507 edition ever existed it must be rare, for it is not included among the publications attributed to Gotardo da Ponte, nor does any copy of it appear to have survived in existing collections. Both the later Turin editions, 1618 in 12mo, and 1620 in 16mo were edited and supplemented by Lodovico Bertaldi (d. 1625), court physician of the dukes of Savoy. At the end of his second edition Bertaldi mentioned a Latin original of this work, then in the ducal library, which he offered to include in a subsequent publication of all Ugo Benzi's medical works, which he never compiled. No trace of this Latin manuscript has been found, nor any reference to it in the alphabetical index of the manuscripts from the library which Duke Vittorio Amedeo II of Savoy (1666-1732) donated in 1720 to form the basis of the present Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria of Turin.8 The lack of manuscripts for the Benzi treatise is explained by the existence of an earlier Latin Pulcherimum et utilissimum opus ad sanitatis conservationem by Benedetto