BORGOGNONI, TEODORICO. — Also known as Teodorico da Lucca (improperly, according to those who believe him to have been born in Parma), son of Ugo, a surgeon of good reputation; born in 1205 or 1208, according to others. He spent his childhood and youth in Bologna; entered the Order of Preachers; plenipotentiary of Pope Innocent IV, he was perhaps also his archiater; he was made bishop of Bitonto in 1262, and in 1266 bishop of Cervia, with his see at Bologna. He died there in 1298, at the age of 93, and was buried in S. Domenico.
Under his father’s instruction and working on his own, he practised the medical art, becoming a highly renowned surgeon. He was the author of a treatise on surgery called Filia principis, from the words with which it begins. His fame as a surgeon is linked less to the technical expertise demonstrated in practice than to the revolutionary boldness with which he modified the customary method of treatment, both for chronic sores and for recent wounds of every kind, recommending the “decent suture” of the wound and the “ingenious dressing,” which was not to be touched for three or four days, unless severe pain and signs of suppuration made a new dressing necessary; the wound was protected with “stupa” soaked in and squeezed of hot wine. Another claim to glory of B. is that he attempted surgical narcosis by means of the soporific “sponge,” “previously soaked in narcotic substances and made to ‘revive’ over the vapours of hot water, then applied, moist and steaming, to the patient’s nose and mouth.” The Surgery of B. was printed and published repeatedly (Venice 1498, 1499, 1513, 1519, 1546).