249 research outputs found
Analisi demografica del cimitero della peste di Alghero (1582-1583)
No full textIn 2008, archaeological excavations carried out in the inner courtyard of the former Jesuit College of Alghero brought to light the San Michele cemetery. Characteristic of the site are some burial trenches, narrow and long pits containing the remains of 10 to 30 individuals, and some multiple tombs, which can be related to the plague epidemic that ravaged the city in 1582-83. The present study is focused on the demographic analysis of the 16 trenches containing 185 individuals and of one multiple tomb (T.141) with 14 individuals. In the case of the trenches it was possible to determine the sex of 178 individuals: 37 are males (20.7%), 53 females (29.8%) and 88 of undetermined sex (49.5%). As for the first two groups, 35.6% of individuals has an age comprised between 20 and 29 years; the two age ranges 30-39 and 40-49 years present the same percentage (25.6%), 8.9% are aged between 17 and 19, and finally 4.4% are over the age of 50. The undetermined sex category is represented by 81 subadults and 7 adults. As for the subadults, the most representative age group is that between 7 and 12 years old with 39.8%, followed by the 23.9% between 13 and 19 years, 18.2% between 2 and 6 years, and finally, 10.2% between 0 and 1 years. The multiple tomb 141 include an adult individual (20-29 years) of undetermined sex, a woman of about 17 years and with a 35-week fetus in her womb, and finally 12 subadults included in an age range between 0-1 years (21.4%), 2-6 years (7.1%) and 7-12 years (50.0%). The cemetery of San Michele presents some similarities with the French cemetery of Martigues struck by the plague in 1720. Also in this cemetery the type of trench burials was found, 5 in this case, with 199 individuals. The comparison between the paleodemographic curves for both cemeteries evidences a similarity of the mortality trend. The difference between normal and catastrophic cemeteries, related to a severe epidemic event, consists in the fact that while in the former there is a greater presence of infants and elderly, in the latter there is a certain homogeneity of mortality, proof of the fact that the plague kills in a random way and therefore all individuals present the same risk of death
Practices and structures for skeletonization and mummification of bodies in southern Italy of late Modern age
No full textIn 2005 and 2006 a paleopathology team of the University of Pisa carried out a survey in north-eastern Sicily to investigate the funerary structures of Late Modern Age for the treatment of the bodies, still largely ignored or misinterpreted from the anthropological and paleopathological point of view. The survey allowed to create a first inventory of mummified remains still in situ in the crypts of north-eastern Sicily and to identify two types of surviving architectural structures for the control of bodies decay, preserved in the hypogea rooms under the churches: the ʻsitting colatoioʼ, aimed at favoring the skeletonization, and the ʻhorizontal colatoioʼ, used to obtain natural mummification by dehydration. The sitting colatoio consists in a masonry seat with a hole at the center of the sitting plane, used for desiccation-release of bones through the down flow of the cadaveric fluids (Fig.1). The horizontal colatoio are very small rooms provided with a horizontal grill, made of wood or pottery tubules, on which the corpse was placed. The body, lying on the grill, would slowly lose its fluids through the skin (Fig. 2). The survey, together with another archaeological research in Campania region in southern Italy and an accurate archival research about the ʻterrasanteʼ, the funerary crypts reserved to the members of Confraternities of Naples (fig. 3), allowed us to propose an new interpretation about use and destination of “colatoi”, with a reflection about the concept of death in terms of duration and of secondary burial, first developed by cultural anthropologists Robert Hertz and Arnold Van Gennep. Both these structures controlled the corpse’s decay and transformed the body in stable and durable simulacra of the dead. The ancient concepts of death as duration and the practices of secondary burial, first analyzed by Robert Hertz in the past century, still survive in many areas of southern Italy. According to these ancestral beliefs, death was perceived not as a sudden event, but as a long-lasting process, during which the dead had to go through a transitory phase, passing from one state of existence to another. The present study demonstrates that these archaic concepts, which seemed to have been uprooted by the Catholic Church, tenaciously resisted in the heart of Modern Mediterranean Europe until Contemporary Age.
Bibliography:
FORNACIARI A., GIUFFRA V., PEZZINI F., Processi di tanatometamorfosi: pratiche di scolatura deicorpi e mummificazione nel regno delle Due Sicilie. Arch. Post Med. 2007; 11: 11-49.
FORNACIARI A., GIUFFRA V., PEZZINI F., Secondary burial and mummification practices in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Mortality 2010; 15/ 3: 223-249.
FORNACIARI A., Skeleton or mummy: practices and structures for secondary burial in southern Italy in modern and contemporary age. Med. Secoli 2013; 25/1: 205-38.
HERTZ R., Contribution à l’étude sur la représentation collective de la mort. Année Sociologique 1907; 10: 48-137.
PARDO I., L’elaborazione del lutto in un quartiere tradizionale di Napoli. Rassegna italiana di Sociologia 1982, 4: 335-369.
PEZZINI F., Doppie esequie e scolatura dei corpi, Med. Secoli 2006; 18/3: 897-924
Necropsy reports and anatomo-pathological observations from the archives of the Grand Ducal Medici family of Florence. Part I - The 16th century
No full textDuring the Renaissance and Early Modern Age dissection began to be practiced for medico-legal
purposes, in order to investigate the causes of death. In particular, during the 15th century evidences of autopsies
performed by doctors on their private patients emerge. These dissections were requested by those families
who can afford the expenses, in order to search the possible presence of hereditary diseases and to predispose
a prevention and cure. The diffusion of this practice is attested also by the work of Antonio Benivieni (1443-
1502), who is considered a pioneer of the pathological anatomy. The extremely rich documentary archives
of the Medici family, one of the most important family of the Italian Renaissance, report several description
of necropsies carried out on the bodies of the members of the family. The analysis of these reports offers
important direct information on the autopsy practices performed by court surgeons of the members of an
aristocratic class in a period comprised between the 16th and the first half of the 18th century, and allows in
some cases also to propose a retrospective diagnosis on the diseases that afflicted the Medici. In this paper
the analysis will be focused on the evidences about autopsies carried out during the 16th century. An evolution
through time can be observed, as from the first very brief notes at the beginning of the period the reports
become more detailed and accurate at the end of the century
Pancio of Controne (1275 ca.-1340), a Tuscan physician at the courts of Edward II and Edward III of England
No full textThis article focuses on the figure of Pancio of Controne, a 14th-century Tuscan physician who played a major role as archiater at the courts of the king Edward II (1307-1327) and Edward III (1327- 1377). Through documents preserved in the English and Italian archives, it is possible to trace the biography of this illustrious physician and to reconstruct his social ascent and his economic activities. What emerges is a multi-faceted figure who devotes himself as much to medicine as to political and above all economic affairs, a range of activities that can be understood if they are read in the light of late medieval society and the Italian commercial expansion of the 13th-14th centuries
Disseminated cystic echinococcosis of Ferdinando II de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany (1610-1670)
No full textThe article examine the necroscopic report of Ferdinando II de' Medici performed in 1670, from which a diagnosis of disseminated cystic echinococcosis can be formulated
Necropsy reports and anatomo-pathological observations from the archives of the Grand Ducal Medici family of Florence. Part II – The 17th and first half of the 18th century
No full textDuring the Modern Age, dissection began to be practiced for medico-legal purposes, in order to investigate the causes of death. In particular, starting from the 15th century evidences of autopsies performed by doctors on their private patients emerge. These dissections were requested by those families who can afford the expenses, in order to search the possible presence of hereditary diseases and to predispose a prevention and cure. The extremely rich documentary archives of the Medici family, one of the most important family of the Italian Renaissance, report several description of necropsies carried out on the bodies of the members of the family. The analysis of these reports offers important direct information on the autopsy practices performed by court surgeons of the members of an aristocratic class in a period comprised between the 16th and the first half of the 18th century, and allows in some cases also to propose a retrospective diagnosis on the diseases that afflicted the Medici. Following a previous work that discussed the evidences dated back to the 16th century, this paper will be focused on the reports about autopsies carried out during the 17th and the first half of the 18th century. During this period, the reports became more accurate and detailed, reaching at the end of the period the characteristic of modern scientific autopsy notes. Therefore, in the majority of cases the lesions referred by the court physician provide sufficient element to propose a retrospective diagnosis based on the symptoms referred by the historical sources during the life of the patients and on the cadaveric examination
BACCIO BALDINI (1517-1589), PROTOMEDICO ALLA CORTE MEDICEA TRA UMANESIMO E SPERIMENTALISMO
No full textThe article aims to shed light on some particular aspects of the activity and the scientific thought of Baccio Baldini, Director of the Laurentian Library and Court physician of the Medici family in Florence. The analysis of his work as a humanist and the recovery of some unpublished documents enable to define the figure of Baldini as a paradigmatic example of the court physicians of modern age in Italy, highlighting the complementarity between humanism and experimentalism in the Renaissance medicine
Un nuovo caso Medievale di una forma di poli-artropatia erosiva conforme all’artite reumatoide dal cimitero di San Biagio in Cittiglio (nord-Italia)
No full textRheumatoid arthritis is a chronic, systemic, inflammatory condition that starts from a synovitis, leading to diffuse erosions in the marginal area of joints and finally conducting to joints deformity and bone ends destruction. The aetiology of the disease is unknown but multiple genetic and environmental factors have been linked to its development. According to clinical studies, the 10-30% of cases undergoes to healing of the lesions and spontaneous remission of the disease. Today's approach to inflammatory diseases is conditioned by the early diagnosis, thanks to the evolution of the analyses and diagnostic methods and by the mitigation of drug therapies. In the past, the remission was entrusted just by the individual’s immune resistance. A case of erosive polyarthropathy has been discovered in an elderly male individual recovered from the medieval cemetery of San Biagio in Cittiglio (northern Italy). The well preserved skeleton was recovered in the external area in front of the church access and, according to the archaeological stratigraphy, it dates back to a period between the 12th and the 13th century. The bone elements, undergone to macroscopic and microscopic analysis, exhibit several erosive lesions with symmetrical distribution, affecting firstly the appendicular skeleton of the little joints of hands and feet and other larger joints, such as the shoulder, elbow and hip. The bony tissue involved by the erosions is the so-called “bare area”, in the marginal region of the joints, where is found the synovium membrane-lined bone. The diagnosis of this erosive polyarthritis is complicated by the mild expression of the lesions and by the presence of a subtle sclerotic border to some erosions observed radiographically. Then, a careful differential diagnosis was necessary to clarify the etiology of the polyarthropathy; the skeletal distribution of the lesions and their macroscopic and radiological appearance are suggestive of a case of rheumatoid arthritis-like polyarthropathy. A hypothetical remission phase of the disease, as demonstrated by the frequent presence of smoothed borders and sclerosed margins on radiographic images, is also suggested. Co-existence of diffuse marginal lipping, joints degeneration and severe areas of eburnation, is also recorded, suggesting a co-morbidity of the erosive condition with Osteoarthritis, which is compatible with the advanced age of the individual. With this medieval case, we present a new evidence of the existence of erosive arthritis and, specifically, of rheumatoid arthritis-like polyarthropathy in Europe before the discovery of the Americas, entering into the long debate about the antiquity of the disease that, firstly, was considered as originated in the New World and subsequently spread to the Old World. On the basis of this and other already published cases, rheumatoid arthritis seems to have been present in Europe more anciently than was previously thought
Historietas subversivas. Rupturas y testimonio en la obra de María Giuffra
No full textThis article investigates the subversion produced by the comic La niña comunista y el niño guerrillero (Una historieta subversiva) 100% testimonial (2021) by María Giuffra. It investigates how the testimonial need produces a stylistic and formal break. First, the author is located within the framework of the productions of the “Hijxs de Desaparecidos” collective and the influences within Argentine and international comics are traced. Second, the comic is analyzed in relation to the discursive strategies they use. Third, the rupture with the comic codes are detailed and the ten testimonies of traumatic childhood that Giuffra proposes are shown. As a result, a hybrid comic is indicated that operates on both the concept of comic and testimony.El presente artículo pretende indagar en la subversión que produce la historieta La niña comunista y el niño guerrillero (Una historieta subversiva) 100% testimonial (2021) de María Giuffra. Se investiga cómo la necesidad testimonial impulsa una ruptura estilística y formal. Primero, se ubica a la autora en el marco de las producciones del colectivo Hijxs de desaparecidos y se rastrean las influencias dentro del cómic argentino e internacional. Segundo, se analiza la historieta en relación con las estrategias discursivas que utiliza. Tercero, se detallan las rupturas con los códigos de la historieta tradicional y se efectúa un recorrido por los testimonios de infancia traumática que propone Giuffra. Como resultado se estudia una historieta híbrida que opera tanto sobre el concepto de historieta como en el de testimonio
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