The extensive family and community networks of past Jewish

graduates also provided a supportive framework for Jewish students. Indeed, more than a quarter of all Jewish graduates in Padua came from just a dozen families. Figure 1 Rabbi Joseph Solomon Qandia Delmedigo (1591–1655) was a rabbi, author, physician, mathematician, and music theorist. He was a student in Padua in 1609–1610. THE UNIVERSITY Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical OF PADUA The University of Padua was founded in 1222, and its Medical School opened in 1250. Its status under Venetian rule from the early fifteenth century and its freedom from papal influence gave it some characteristics which did not pertain elsewhere, such as making its own policy on the admission of students. The prosperity and stability of the Venetian republic created the conditions which made it possible for Jewish students to travel across Europe to study in Padua (Figure 2). Religious divisions in Europe did not prevent Protestant or Jewish students attending Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical this PF-4708671 manufacturer nominally Catholic university,

with the first Jewish student graduating in 1409.14 Over the centuries it gained a reputation as a center of excellence for the quality of Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical its teaching in its Medical School and in its other Faculties. Indeed, the Medical School was widely regarded as the best medical school in Europe. Foreign students, like William Harvey from England and many others from Britain and elsewhere in Europe, were drawn in large numbers because of the quality of the clinical teaching, rather than the formal lectures which were available in universities Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical abroad.15 By the late sixteenth century students attended daily hospital rounds, and discussion of major cases, urine examination, feeling pulses, and attending autopsies were standard teaching methods.15 Figure 2 The extent of the Venetian Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical Empire, its commercial colonies and shipping routes. Jews had been

associated with some of the earliest European universities, and while there had been occasional Jewish medical students at other Italian universities it was only in Padua where, despite regulations to the contrary, Jews managed to qualify as physicians from the early fifteenth century and on a regular and continuing basis in the subsequent out centuries.16 While encountering petty anti-Jewish prejudices, usually in the form of fines or other financial impositions during their course of study, the opportunity offered by Padua was not equaled elsewhere in Europe before the end of the seventeenth century. Elsewhere in Italy and beyond, equal opportunities for Jewish medical students had to wait for more enlightened times. A few Jews were admitted to degrees in Siena during the seventeenth century and just a few at various times in Naples, Bologna, Rome, and Pisa, while in Livorno Jews were only admitted to medical studies in 1738. Jewish medical students first appeared at the University of Padua in the early fifteenth century, and numbers grew gradually.