Chimico, giammai meccanico. L’opera di Martino Poli tra medicina, filosofia naturale e pratica alchemica

This paper focuses on Martino Poli (1662-1714), a chymist and apothecary from Lucca who in his treatise of 1706 Il trionfo degli acidi (“The Triumph of Acids”) launched a sharp attack against the mechanist-corpuscularian theories adopted by many Italian physicians and natural philosophers of the time. As both a proud empiricist and a supporter of Spagyric medicine, the author criticized the corpuscular model (and the many moderns who upheld it) for not standing the test of practice. Poli’s case study offers an opportunity to shed more light on two important aspects of early modern science: the persistence of Neoplatonic and Hermetic knowledge well into the XVIII century, and the actual role played by these traditions in the evolution of the medical and natural philosophical debate.