|
|
|
Lesson 4 |
The 17th century: Scientific Revolution. Circulation of the Blood. The Doctrine of Contagion. Witch Hunting. |
|
|
|
|
|
Fabrizio Hildanus (1545-1599)asserted that pus must not enter the wound, and that before operating, a ligature must be applied to the vessels. Gaspare Tagliacozzo (1545-1599) learnt the method of nose reconstruction from the "Norcini" who operated in southern Italy. Nasal reconstruction was important given that nose was destroyed by many diseases such as tuberculosis and syphilis, as well as because of the very frequent mutilations caused by firearms.
His most important contribution to science was certainly the use of mathematics, necessary to quantify experiments. Because Galileo was a physicist, he elaborated a theory according to which the body was a machine and the organs were smaller or minute machines, moreover, he had to research the elementary machine. Galileo's microscopes had great problems because they refracted and reflected the light so much that many illusory images were seen: this brought strong criticism of the microscope. Marco Aurelio Severino (1580-1656) was born in Tarsia, Calabria, and lived in Naples where he was Professor of Anatomy and Medicine. He fully embraced Galileo's philosophy and by using the microscope he described the uterus of the beetle (which it does not possess, naturally). All the same he demonstrated that the insects have organs which are found in the higher orders of animals. He also felt the microscope had to be used in order to see invisible things and that anatomy must not be considered as the "art of dissection" but must serve to uncover and research into atoms (Anatomia dissutrix non dissectrix) . Severino was also a great surgeon and the author (1632) of the first illustrated textbook on surgical pathology. In Naples there was an epidemic of diphtheria and he performed laryngectomy thereby saving many lives. During the plague he did not flee the city, as many other doctors did, but remained to care for sick persons. However, unfortunately, he succumbed to and died of plague. The studies of insects using the microscope proved that things that seemed to be absolutely simple were, in fact, very complicated. Some of the students of the school of Galileo used clever devices in order to disclose hidden structures, thereby creating the so called "artificial" anatomy. For example, at Palermo Giovanbattista Odierna (1597-1660) by boiling the eye of a fly proved that it was made of a chrystalline myriad which allowed the insect to have 360° vision. Besides the microscope, the micoscopius naturae (the microscope of nature) could be used. In fact, Auberius, who was a student of Giovanni Alfonso Borelli (1608-1679) , who himself was one of Galileo's students, in order to show how the testicle is made, studied the much bigger testis of pig, the animal which had previously struck Galen because its organs were similar to those of man. Auberius discovered the seminoferous tubules, the structure of the efferent canals and the epididymis, which were then compared to those of man. Therefore, any method was in order to understand how the human body is constructed and works. The fact that Galilean science was based on experiment and that significance could be given to findings only after having been observed and measured, brought consequences that were at times at the limit of the possible. For example, the great scientist Sanctorius Sanctorius (1561-1636) , who hailed from Istria and was a pupil of the Galilean school, spent a large part of his life in a weighing machine in which he weighed himself when he ate and after he defecated, measuring what was left after he had eaten: he thus gained an intuition about metabolism. He also understood that sweating served to eliminate heat. He was also the first to measure the pulse and to use a thermometer to measure body temperature.
1628: this is the historical date in which Harvey published his tract entitled Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus. Harvey, using the same plate as Fabricius ab Aquapendente, demonstrated that the blood in the veins did not have centrifugal flow, as reported by Galen, according to whom blood went from the liver to the periphery. Fabricius had interpreted those swellings (due to the venous valves, that can be seen when a vein is compressed) as The new theory had several supporters, but also many critics, wheras the concept of circulation was associated with a political idea on the circulation of power. Although Harvey was initially much criticised, the theory was later accepted, resulting in the liver being declassified as the principal organ, its function being reduced to bile secretion. Furthermore, a famous anatomist Thomas Bartholin (who was also Stensen's teacher) published the exequiae(exequies) on the liver.
The Problem of Contagion
Sardinia is a typical example of how diseases such as plague took root in the city, but seldom in the villages. The vehicle causing plague is the flea. In fact, it is the rat on which the flea lives which falls ill with the plague, and then the flea transmits the plague to human beings, after which, the plague becomes a pulmonary disease meaning that the contagion goes directly from man to man. The plague came from the Orient, and it seems that it may have been brought to Messina by a Genoese ship which had escaped from a city that was being besieged. The enemies had thrown corpses of the plague's dead victims into the city, so some sailors fell ill and brought the disease to Messina from where it spread throughout Italy, and then throughout all Europe. The later disappearance of plague was favoured by the fact that around the end of 17th century there was an invasion of brown rats which supplanted the black rat, which is much more receptive to the plague, and also because wooden floors in which the rats could live stopped being built (above all this happened in places with hot climates). Another hypothesis maintained that this was due to the appearance of a less virulent germ, which caused the immunisation of rats. Almost contemporaneously with the publication of the work of Andreas Vesalius, there was a famous Veronese medical anatomist Hieronymus Fracastoro (1478/9-1553) , who named an endemic disease which had already developed: syphilis. First page of Gerolamo Fracastoro poem on syphilisSyphilis broke out for the first time in an epidemic fashion during the 1496 siege of Naples by Carlo VIII, king of France. Until Italy was a leading nation, syphilis was called 'French disease', but when Italy declined, the French appellation: 'Neapolitan illness' prevailed.
Fracastoro named the disease "syphilis" in a famous little poem dedicated to Pietro Bembo. In it he also spoke of the legno santo (holy wood) which was one of the principal therapies at the time: it was believed that this particular resin, guiacum, which caused profuse sweating and drooling, cured syphilis because, according to Hippocratic principles, it eliminated the materia peccans. The excess of phlegm, at the origin of the disease, had to be removed by using pharmaceutical drugs which caused sweating and drooling, such as the guiacum, and also mercury. Syphilis, it was a disease which made the fortune of many physicians because in 30% of the cases it healed itself. When a person recovered from the illness, the doctor maintained that it was because of the effectiveness of his cure, although of course this was not really the case. To fight syphilis, mercury was administered, which, being toxic for the sudoriferous and salivary glands, caused a very potent secretion. At that time the treatment proposed to avoid sweating and drooling was to place an incandescent iron bar on the patient's head since it was believed, as we have seen, that saliva and sweat came from the brain. Mercury also made teeth turn black, forcing noble women to file their teeth in order to hide the fact that they were undergoing the mercury therapy against syphilis. Fracastoro believed that invisible living organisms existed which spread the plague. These he called 'seminaria' which can best be translated as 'seeds' and can be thought of as being akin to bacteria or virus. These 'seminaria' could be transmitted not only by direct contact but also through clothes, sheets, and objects. Another endemic illness frequent at that time was leprosy. Leprosy in Sardinia took root especially in villages because it is an illness whose incubation is very slow. Leprosy is quite similar to tuberculosis and the two micro-organisms are rivals for, where there is leprosy, there is no tuberculosis and vice versa. Till a few years ago, there were many leprosy hotbeds in Sardinia. To contract leprosy, prolonged contagion is necessary for the infection to take root, therefore it is unlikely that a person who travels a lot would contract it. Leprosy was an illness to be feared, having rather particular social implications. In fact, when it was discovered that someone had leprosy (at the end of Medieval times and the beginning of modern times) a funeral was arranged and the poor fellow lost all his rights. However, since lepers were kept in isolation at the community's expense, poverty-stricken people declared themselves to be lepers in order to survive through receiving this form of social security. The infamous practice of witch hunting started between the end of the XIV century in the Christian world, both among Catholics and Protestants. The criteria useful to detect witchcraft and to persecute witches as heretics, were detailed in the notorious: Malleus Maleficarum a textbook authored in the XV century by two fanatic German Dominican monks: Jakob Sprenger and Heirich Institor Kramer, which had, for the time, an enormous circulation (34 editions with more than 30000 copies). Witch hunting took place particularly between the end of 1400 and the first half of 1600. The alleged witches belonged to common people and were usually widows or single women, midwifes, herbalists, sorceresses or prostitutes. Many “witches” were subjected to horrible torments and burned alive. Their “confessions”, wringed by torture, were used as evidence to indict other unfortunate women. As a rule the practice, with some exceptions, was limited to the female sex. The last trials for witchcraft where the “witches” were sentenced and burned alive, took place in Protestant Switzerland in 1782, and in Catholic Poland in 1793. |
![]() |
From the notes of Mario D'Atri |