Francesco Baldanzi
The paper focuses on the reconstruction of theoretical and practical teaching for surgeons as well as practical training for physicians in the Florentine Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova. Heterogeneous and unpublished sources are discussed that confirm the hypothesis of an educational function already present at the end of the sixteenth century under the Grand Duke Francesco I (the oldest document has hitherto been from 1630). These documents integrate the names of the first doctors with explicit teaching assignments and suggest that ‘medici astanti’ could be assigned didactic tasks as early as the seventeenth century.