Scotto, Dionisio | A seventeenth-century snake oil salesman

Scotto, Dionisio

Che Non sia alcuna persona che ardisca di vendere, o far vendere il detto olio … sotto pena di ducato cento d'oro … Florence: Alle scale di Badia, n.d.; Siena: Alla Loggia del Papa, 1605

Printed broadside (422 x 288 mm). Text within a border of printed ornaments, large historiated woodcut initial, surmounted by the Medici coat of arms; scattered oxidized ink spots costing words here and there.

"The most powerful invention of the secret" by the Mantuan charlatan Dionisio Scotto of Mantua. His cure-all presentation was accompanied by a multitude of actors and jesters. He enjoyed a certain notoriety in his day, boasting that he earned 10,000 scudi over a ten-year period. In his work, De gli errori popolari d’Italia (1603), Girolamo Mercurio "uses Scotto's success as an example of how charlatans used deceit to rob honest people, particularly the poor, of their hard-earned money" (David Genticore, Medical Charlatanism in Early Modern Italy, p. 14).

The therapeutic virtues of Scotto’s topical oil are profusely listed on the broadside. Among the diseases and ailments Scotto claimed it cured: cough, asthma, rheum, indigestion, constipation, colic, kidney stones, fever, deafness, scrofula, epilepsy, etc. The cure is effected by applying the oil to the body for a prescribed number of days. Scotto was quite proprietary about his remedial oil, which was purportedly sanctioned by the Grand Duke of Tuscany. The title translates roughly: " That there is no person who dares to sell or have the said oil sold … in the states of Serenissimo Grand Duke of Tuscany, under penalty of 100 gold ducats …"