Acta Medico-Historica Adriatica最新文献

The first official case of HIV infection in Portugal was confirmed in 1983. Faced with the threat of a global epidemic caused by an unknown virus, Portugal responded to the WHO's call in 1985 by establishing institutions with the aim of supporting state decisions, conducting epidemiological studies, controlling the spread of the virus, diagnosing cases, disseminating information, and educating the population. Portugal has come a long way from initially denying the existence of the disease and refusing to disclose the positive result to patients. The serious case of infecting haemophiliacs with a batch of Factor VIII imported from an Austrian laboratory, resulting in the deaths of dozens of patients, forced the Portuguese public health authorities to create organisations able to face the fight against AIDS. By trying to control the serious drug addiction problem after the Portuguese revolution of April 1974, the conservative society was able to change its attitude and pass groundbreaking legislation worldwide and implement a successful programme to control AIDS infection among injecting drug users. Issues such as the effectiveness of these measures in controlling the AIDS epidemic and their impact on Portuguese society at the end of the 20th century will be addressed in this paper.

Scientific meeting review

In 1715, two Slovenian physicians, Johann Baptist Werloschnig de Perenberg and Antonius Loigk, published an extensive volume on the last plague epidemic in Central Europe. Hidden within its pages is a description of smallpox inoculation, which predates any record of this procedure in Europe by several years. The procedure was personally witnessed by Loigk in Vienna in or before 1714. Very little is currently known about the context of this event. We do not know how many inoculators there were, how many patients were treated and, crucially, how the procedure was received by the medical establishment in Austria. All these pieces of information would be necessary to understand the impact of this discovery on early 18th-century Austrian (and, by extension, Eastern European) society. In order to sketch out the possible connections, we will focus on a reconstruction of the intellectual network of both Slovenians as it appears in the academic literature of the time. We hope that these links may reveal something about a group of physicians who may have had early knowledge about this important anti-epidemic measure.

Giuseppe Cervetto (1807-1865) was a physician, lecturer, and medical historianfrom a Jewish familyborn in Verona, Italy. In addition to his clinical practice, he delved into historical studies, making notable contributions to the works of Italian anatomists from the 15th century, as well as to the physicians and their College in Verona, particularly G.B. Da Monte from the 16th century.In 1860, he was called to teach History of Medical Sciences at the University of Bologna. After two years, he became a lecturer in Hygiene and Forensic Medicine at Messina, but he sadly passed away at the relatively young age of 57 due to his delicate health.He strongly believed in the importance of medical knowledge «enriched by history», actively advocating the use of the biographical method in reconstructing the historical development of medicine and its inseparable connection with philosophy.

The Nobel Prizes have been awarded since 1901 from the interest rate of the principal, established for this purpose in the form of a foundation by the inventor of dynamite, the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel. The disciplines for which they are assigned are Physics, Chemistry, Medicine and Physiology, Literature and Peace, and, starting in 1969, economics. As early as the mentioned 1901, the year of the first awards, the Nobel Prize in Physics was received by the German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen for his discovery of the X-rays on the 8th of November 1895, which is considered to be the foundation of the modern medical discipline of clinical radiology. Further discoveries followed, such as the ones of computed tomography imaging or magnetic resonance imaging, which have significantly improved clinical radiological diagnostics. Other Nobel Prize winners for discoveries and inventions related to the speciality of clinical radiology will be highlighted on this trail. The areas of their scientific research from which they have received the aforementioned awards will be analysed, and their impact on the development of clinical radiology will be evaluated.

Hernia is characterized as the protrusion of peritoneum with or without an organ or a portion of an organ through the defect of abdominal wall. It's likely that inguinal hernias have been a problem since the beginning of a human history. Many doctors have had challenges in the past when treating them. Although they are no longer recognized as a fatal illness, they are nevertheless very common in the general population and they can be clinically complicated. There has been advancement in hernia repair throughout history. The biggest advancement was in the late 1800s when Eduardo Bassini published his method of triple sewing fascia and muscle tissues to reinforce the posterior wall of the inguinal canal. The use of prosthetic materials in the repair of the inguinal canal marked the next major development. Irving Lichtenstein is credited with being a pioneer in the use of prolene mesh for tension-free repair. The last reamrkable development was the introduction of laparoscopic techniques in surgery, which are nowadays very commonly used in laparoscopic procedures.

Scientific meeting review.

In 1842, at a time when Romanian society was taking its first steps towards modernization, a Jewish man from Galicia chose to settle in Wallachia. This man was a physician with a medical degree in "medicine and surgery" obtained at the University of Berlin, spoke two widely spoken European languages (French and German), and was concerned with diverse areas of knowledge, such as philosophy, natural sciences, law, and more. As an ethnic Jew, he made a remarkable career in Wallachia. He was a physician in the country's medical service, professor, hospital director, journalist, and philanthropist. He founded the first children's hospital in the country and two influential newspapers. He campaigned for the political rights of Wallachian Jews and the modernization of the synagogue cult. He gave public conferences in the country and abroad and translated and wrote several books. The physician's name was Iuliu Barasch, and this study tries to reconstruct his life and medical activity between 1842 and 1863 in Wallachia, a period marked by social unrest, revolution, war, and cholera epidemics, but also unionist actions, political and social reforms. For this reconstruction, I researched documentary material in archives, the press of the time, journals, memoirs, and specialized literature.

Guest Editorial

In general, Vesalius (1514-1564) is considered a pioneer in the study of anatomy. However, he had several important predecessors whose contributions are considered fundamental to the history of anatomy. Amongst these pre-Vesalian anatomists, Jacopo Berengario da Carpi (c. 1460-1530) is widely acknowledgedas the most important one, and by some scholars even as the first ever anatomist. Berengario was the first anatomist who recognized the value and importance of anatomical illustrations for text comprehension. Our analysis is based on his works "Carpi Commentaria super anatomiaMundini" (1521) and "Isagogae breves" (1522). In contrast to Vesalius, who attempted to put into practice only Latin nomenclature, Berengario da Carpi had no ambition to reform anatomical terminology or purge it from "barbaric" terms. He just adopted the most widely used terms of his time, no matter their Latin, Greek, or Arabic origin. His work titled Isagogae contains an important list of all relevant terms used in the text, which serves as a historical record of the anatomical nomenclature used in his period. All this establishes the historical legacy of his work, which contributed to the development of anatomical terminology.This is why, from the current perspective of a medical school anatomy teacher, Berengario's conviction about the need not only to read a textbook but also to see anatomical structures with one's own eyes is relevant even in the third millennium.