Zacchia, Paolo

ZACCHIA, PAOLO. - Physician, b. in Rome in 1584, d. there in 1659.

He completed his elementary and secondary studies with the Piarist Fathers and the Jesuits; he took his degree in medicine in Rome. In 1644, when Innocent X was pope, he was appointed by him protomedicus and pontifical architect, thanks also to the clear fame he had by then achieved through his Quaestiones medico-morales, which he had begun publishing as early as 1621. He had a versatile mind, devoting himself to painting and to composing music and poetry, but he remains famous for his culture and his practical skill as a physician; above all he is considered the founder and, for his times, an excellent cultivator of legal and pastoral medicine (v. MEDICINA PASTORALE). He was buried in the church of S. Maria in Vallicella, in Rome.

In his works he wrote on the most varied subjects and was among the first to maintain the contagiousness of tuberculosis. His Quaestiones in 10 books, intended for physicians and students of law, whose publication cost him about thirty years, treat in particular the most varied medico-legal subjects, from pregnancy to childbirth, of dietetics and teratology, of offspring and the determination of paternity, of toxicology, of malingering, of the contagiousness of diseases, of professional errors, of medical deontology, of the pulmonary docimasia, of the possessed and the demoniacs. He also wrote a treatise on depressive-type neuropsychoses.