Tra Novellara e Bozzolo. Curiosità medico-scientifiche e interessi alchemici

The connection that unites two important cadet courts in Mantua, Novellara and Bozzolo in the seventeenth century, is the study object of this paper, which makes use of a rich unpublished documentation in the years between 1655 and 1660 and kept in the Corrispondenza of the Town Hall Historical Archive of Novellara. In particular, the numerous letters written from Bozzolo to the Count of Novellara Alfonso II (1616-1678) attest to the presence of medical-scientific interests: they show the more general developments known from medical practice, inevitably passing through alchemy, starting from the beginning of the sixteenth century, thus demonstrating these gentlemen's will of remaining constantly updated.