Florence, 1563. Forbidden from practicing her herbal cures in Venice, the young noblewoman Bianca Capello flees to Florence, where the ruling Medici family practices alchemy. There, she wins herself an invitation to their palace, and, as it turns out, a path to the duke regent Francesco’s bed.

The impassioned bond between Francesco de Medici and Bianca is at the core of this fact-driven dive into medicine, politics, love, and ultimately death in Renaissance Florence. Malaria killed many of the Medicis, but traces of the poison arsenic were recently found in Francesco’s remains. Even more sinister: Bianca’s remains have never been found. To this day, what happened to Bianca and Francesco remains one of the greatest mysteries surrounding Renaissance Italy’s legendary Medicis.

Bianca’s Cure probes what might have been as Bianca’s quest for a malaria cure in palaces, gardens, sick rooms, and whorehouses collides with Francesco’s intensifying illness. Her main tool is the herb artemisia medicine still used today.

A woman who dared to practice science well ahead of her time, Bianca fights off self-doubt until she believes herself invincible. But is she? When only she stands between Francesco and death, her skill may save him or doom them both. 500 years after, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded in 2015 to the Chinese woman scientist Tu You.

You, who, without a doctorate or medical degree, with her team discovered the anti-malaria drug artemisinin, derived from artemisia what she called in the title to her Nobel Lecture “A gift from traditional Chinese medicine to the world.”

And what of the real Bianca Capello? The famed mistress of Francesco de' Medici, Bianca Capello indeed had a study in Palazzo Vecchio, which can be toured today.