Ugolino Caccini (Ugolino da Montecatini) – Doctor

Ugolino Caccini also known as Ugolino da Montecatini was born in Montecatini Alto in 1345. His father Giovanni, a notable citizen, had been a signatory, in 1330, of the act of submission of the Castle of Montecatini to the Municipality of Florence.

He studied in Bologna where he graduated in medicine in 1367.

At first he practiced in various places in the surrounding area, such as Pistoia and Pescia. Later he moved to Pisa as the personal physician of the then lord of the city Pietro Gambacorta, who encouraged him to study the composition and effectiveness of the thermal waters of San Giuliano Terme (Pi).

After this experience, at the request of the illustrious Coluccio Salutati, chancellor of the Florentine Republic, he was appointed lecturer of medicine in that city, then we find him in Pesaro as personal physician of the lord Pandolfo Malatesta but, in 1420, old and ill, he returned to Florence where he died on 10 October 1425. He was buried in the church of Santa Maria Novella in a rich tomb (later disappeared during the eighteenth-century restoration) with a tombstone sculpted by Michelozzo di Bartolomeo, a pupil of Donatello.

The work that has consigned Ugolino da Montecatini to history, as the founder of Italian medical hydrology, is the famous De balneorum Italiae proprietatibus ac virtutibus (written in 1417 and printed in Venice 1553) in short “Tractatus de Balneis”, the first authoritative text of medical hydrology and thermal hydrotherapy in which the therapeutic qualities of thermal waters are described with useful indications on the methods and times of therapy depending on the various waters and different diseases. In particular, he wrote about the benefits of the waters of Montecatini both at a hydropinic level and as mud therapy.

For further information, https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/ugolino-caccini_(Dizionario-Biografico)/