| Summary: | The author recounts the story of the relationship between healers and patients in the 16th and 17th centuries whereby the practitioner was contractually bound to heal a sick person within a specified period of time, for a stipulated sum. If the patient was not cured, no money changed hands. When disputes over payment arose, the cases were heard by the Protomedicato, the judicial arm of the College of Medicine. By the end of the period, according to Pomata, this system was undermined as physicians and jurists both recognized that payment by results was incompatible with the professionalization of medicine.
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