Hugh of Lucca or Hugh Borgognoni (also Ugo) (1160–c.1259) was a medieval surgeon. He and Theodoric of Lucca, his son or student, are noted for their use of wine as an antiseptic in the early 13th century.
Hugh of Lucca
Hugh of Lucca, also known Ugo de Borgognoni, was born in 1160, around the time the teaching of corpus juris was said to be common where the University of Bologna had included the "healing art" of medicine into its subjects of grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, and the free subjects of music and astronomy. He was a physician at the end of the period where medicine was a profession transmitted from father to son via observations.
It is assumed that he arrived in Bologna and continued his profession as a surgeon until his death there. Some regard him as the founder of the surgical school of Bologna as he was the pioneer of a new wound treatment and the starter of a new era. Although it is also declared in some sources that in the early thirteenth century the Salernitan surgical traditions of the Medical School of Salerno had been brought to Bologna by Roland of Parma at the time Hugh of Lucca was employed by the city as military surgeon.
He is also said to have been a man of action, since he accompanied the Bolognese army on the Fifth Crusade, visiting both Syria and Egypt, and being present at the Siege of Dammietta in 1219. He is thought to gain a rich experience in not only the wounds of the soldiers but also on the Black Death, which was ravaging the opposing armies during the lengthy period of time of conflict he was a witness to.
Acts in the Crusades
Hugh of Lucca was initially an empiricist, challenging the doctrine of Galen by methods rooted in experiments and experiences. He advocated the aseptic theory against the conventional treatments that were generally used where suppuration and pus formation were thought necessary for healing. He condemned the laudable pus theory, which he regarded as "hindering the nature and prolonging the healing".
While on the crusades, he travelled with the Bolognese army between 1218 and 1221. While he was treating war wounds he came to the understanding that the best way to heal the wounds of the skull involved the prevention of suppuration.
In 1221, after his return to Bologna, he was appointed as a legal physician in the city; a position recorded for the first time and concerned with medical juris-prudence. Although he lived into his 90s, and assumedly passed away in 1259, it is continuously stated in sources that he left no written record, and all his achievements were noted down by Theodoric.
The Method of Hugh of Lucca: Innovations in Wound Treatment
For those wounded on the medieval battlefield, the odds of survival were not great. Despite being treated, many would die shortly afterwards from infections. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a small group of surgeons believed they had a better way of treating these injuries. But they would have to challenge hundreds of years of medical knowledge.
Hugh of Lucca (1160-1257), his pupil and son, Theodoric, Bishop of Cervia (1205-96), and French anatomist and surgeon Henri of Mondeville (1260-1320), who learned this method from studying Theodoric’s Surgery in medical courses taught by Jean Pitard (1235-1330) and Lanfranc of Milan (1250-1306) challenged the conventional treatment of wounds sustained in battle, which involved suppuration, or the encouragement of pus formation, held to be necessary in the healing process. They advocated and practiced a treatment known as the aseptic theory or dry method of wound treatment in which foreign objects were removed, haemorrhaging was stopped, and wounds were closed immediately. Upon closure, wounds were dressed in a dry cloth without encouraging pus formation or suppuration.The dry method of healing was controversial for two reasons. Firstly, it rejected conventional medical wisdom based on Galen and other ancient writers who believed that the healing was not possible without the removal of “bad humours”. Several experts have argued that the doctrine of the humours was so entrenched in the medieval medical community that to challenge it was an act of heresy. Any medic who opposed the thousand-year method of healing was maligned. Secondly, the dry method of healing repudiated a religious belief system that taught that the evacuation of bad humours was a cleansing of evil from the body. Suppuration was a form of exorcism. Medieval people often viewed disease and infection as punishment for bad behaviour. The individual needed to be cleansed both physically and spiritually.