Set against the sumptuous backdrop of Renaissance Italy, this riveting historical thriller explores the era's medicine and culture through the life of the world's first "celebrity doctor"---whose miracle cures and outsize personality drew both adoration and scorn.The Professor of Secrets was Leonardo Fioravanti, a brilliant, forward-thinking, and utterly unconventional doctor. His marvelous remedies and talent for self-aggrandizement earned him the admiration of the people, the derision of the medical establishment, and a reputation as one of his era's most colorful and combative figures.Meticulously researched and engagingly written by Pulitzer Prize-nominated historian William Eamon, The Professor of Secrets entices us into a scientific underworld of sorcerers, plagues, and alchemy, where charlatans sold their wares in the streets, gunfire inflicted horrifying wounds, and surgeons attempted daring cures. The little-known story of the controversial doctor who practiced in an age when warfare was the surgeon's school will grip and fascinate all who take pleasure in Renaissance intrigue, the milestones of medicine, and the best of historical tales.To The Common People, he was "that glorious man of new miracles" and "an angel of paradise, sent by God to earth for the health and preservation of human life." Yet fellow scientists branded him a charlatan and a dangerous quack---and he served time in prison for poisoning his patients. It was from his cell that Leonardo Fioravanti issued an audacious challenge: "Let there be consigned to me alone twenty or twenty-five sick people...and an equal number with similar infirmities to all the physicians of Milan. If I don't cure my patients quicker and better than they do theirs, I'm willing to be banished forever..."In this impeccably crafted tale, noted historian William Eamon chronicles they stranger-than-fiction life of surgeon Leonardo Fioravanti, the original "celebrity physician"---whose saga opens a captivating window onto the scientific and medical practices of the late Renaissance. Eamon points up the unromanticized realities of the age, chronicling a time when the next devastating plague was just a flea bite away...when corsairs roamed the Mediterranean Sea...when barber surgeons bled their patients along with giving them a shave...when one could buy a ticket to view the dissection of a human body...and when scientists practiced a "chemistry-kit-in-the-basement" style of experimentation. The Professor of Secrets reconstructs a fascinating character lost to history and offers us an alternative version of the Scientific Revolution, through the experiences of a man who lived on the margins of great events and witnessed them with a penetrating vision. In telling this spellbinding story, Eamon offers up a brilliant entry in the genre of popular history. Read Less