Acta Medico-Historica Adriatica最新文献

Exhibition / Museum Review

The Austrian emperor and the Croat-Hungarian king Franz Joseph I (1830/1848-1916) was the longest-serving ruler of the Habsburg dynasty. Among his properties was Osijek, which since 1809 enjoyed the status of a free royal city. In the period under review, it was the seat of the Virovitica County and the capital of the Kingdom of Slavonia until its incorporation into the Triune Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia after the Croat-Hungarian settlement of 1868. Because of this, Osijek was not only a political, economic and cultural centre but also a health care centre. At the beginning of the reign of Franz Joseph I, two hospitals were operating in it: a military one in the baroque military garrison Tvrđa and a civilian one in New Town. The most significant role in the further development of the Osijek and Slavonian health care was played by the trust established in 1806 from the legacies of innkeeper Johann Kolhoffer, tanner Josef Huttler and Jesuit Cristian Monsperger. Although originally intended for the establishment of an orphanage, due to a number of unfavourable political circumstances, the trust, until then with multiple interests attributed to the principal, came under the administration of the city of Osijek only in 1867. Along with the new orphanage opened in 1874, a new hospital was completed as well in 1868, also with the money from the trust. Huttler-Kohlhoffer-Monsperger Foundation Hospital was the largest and most modern hospital in the Triune Kingdom, and despite later constructions of various hospital wards, its building has remained the most representative building within the Clinical-Hospital Centre Osijek.

The Second World War created a caesura in various spheres of life, including medical care. Many doctors and nurses in Slovenia joined the Partisan movement and helped organise medical care. The first activities were undertaken in 1942, followed a year later by the development of the first rudimentary, clandestine partisan medical stations acting as hospitals. Nearly 15 000 patients with injuries and illnesses were treated in such partisan medical facilities. The staff included 244 doctors and dentists, 260 medical students, 38 nurses and more than 3 000 ad hoc trained medics. This article presents the "Celje" partisan hospital from the Upper Savinja Valley, focusing on the testimonies of Partisan doctors and other witnesses who provided first-hand accounts about everyday life in this and other Partisan medical facilities. The main source of information was the notes of surgeon Dr Robert Kukovec, which date from the final year of the war. Dr Kukovec was among the few individuals who left behind a written account of the wartime events they had witnessed, offering an insight into the tragedy of war. His account also depicts many sombre moments but also rare bright ones, in particular the yearning for the freedom that destiny prevented Dr Kukovec from experiencing, given that he was killed less than a month before the end of the war.

Reviewing ancient manuscripts of Persian medicine (PM) reveals that there have been some basic principles for decision-making in epidemic infectious diseases that existed in the past. These PM rules for clinical reasoning were applied through a personalized approach along with public health advice in such situations. Currently, the coronavirus pandemic has been the biggest problem in the world. Its mainstay of treatment is based on preventative measures and symptomatic treatments. Meanwhile, traditional medical systems for providing preventive, supportive, and rehabilitative care to patients have received more attention than before. Thus, the specific individual approach considered by PM scholars for clinical courses of epidemic infectious diseases may help shed more light on the spread of knowledge on epidemic diseases in ancient Persia.

This review describes the first medical article written by an author from Bosnia and Herzegovina. The article was published by Fr. Franjo Gracić (1740-1799), in Latin, under the title: "Analysis theorico-practica de viribus virus febriferi, pestiferi, atque serpentin", and printed in Padua in 1795, translated as: "A Theoretical and Practical Presentation of the Effects of Fevers, Infectious Diseases, and Snake Poison". From today's standpoint, it may be said that it was a review article about some of the most frequent diseases of that time. The paper is of exceptional importance for the history of medicine in Bosnia and Herzegovina because it is the first documented medical article whose author was from Bosnia and Herzegovina. The paper contains observations of the course of diseases and treatment, in line with the medical insights of the time. The author refers to the authorities of that time, such as Samuel Auguste André Tissot, the Swiss physicist and doctor, Georg Bauer, the German doctor, and Lodovico Antonio Muratori, the Italian scholar, which makes this article a link between Bosnia and Herzegovina and the knowledge of the Europe of that time. This paper represents the beginning of medical writing in Bosnia and Herzegovina and has a very important place in the history of medicine in this country.

Prikaz izložbe / Exhibition review

The monastery of Saint Catherine of Sasso was built overhanging the eastern shore of Lake Maggiore in the municipality of Leggiuno (VA). In particular, our paper concerns the relics housed in the Sacellum of the church of St. Caterina. According to the tradition, the first Sacellum dedicated to the saint was built before the 16th century over a medieval hermit’s refuge. The chronicle, the Historieta, remembers that, in the 12th century, a merchant of Arolo, Alberto Besozzi, survived the lake crossing shipwreck and made a vow to St. Catherine of Alexandria. He decided to retreat in prayer in a cave on that part of the coast. The Sacellum, now incorporated in the monastery complex (at the bottom of the central nave of the church), preserved human remains of Blessed Alberto in the past. We present the important role that the Sacellum and the relics have played not only for the faith, but also for the devotion of pilgrims and local people. In this context, this monument is related to the sense of religiosity and spirituality that pervaded medieval life, where every form of prayer is to be materialized in the physicality of a tangible creation.

Ibn Sina, better known to the Western medical historians by his Latin nickname Avicenna, is considered the third most important physician in medical history, along with the Greek physician Hippocrates and the Roman physician Galen. He was born around 980 in Afshona near Bukhara on the Silk Road in present-day Uzbekistan and died in 1037 in Hamadan near Tehran in present-day Iran. Among his greatest contributions to the development of medicine is his work entitled The Canon of Medicine, in which he summarized all the previous medical knowledge, which is why it has been used for centuries as a basic medical textbook. In recent times, in connection with the controversy over the naming of the medieval caliphate medicine, with the aim of formulating an inclusive term, which would not emphasize any involved group to the detriment of the others, paradoxically in the focus of the research of the in it interested historians of medicine, instead of the achievements of the individual doctors from the mentioned era, came the determination of their ethnic and religious affiliation, including Avicenna’s, all the more so because he came from the disputed area of the conflicts between different nations and opposing religions. In doing so, scientific discussions are increasingly joined by the erection of the representative architectural structures in the places related to the individual doctors, one of which is the representative Avicenna Museum in Afshona.

Breast cancer (BC) is the most common malignancy to affect females. The first suggestions of BC and its treatment date back to Ancient Egypt, 1500-1600 B.C. Throughout history, the management of BC has evolved from extensive radical mastectomy towards less invasive treatments. Radical mastectomy was introduced by W.S. Halsted in 1894, involving the resection of the breast, regional lymph nodes, pectoralis major and minor. Despite its mutilating effect, it had been the main surgical approach to BC patients until 1948, when Patey and Dyson proposed its modified form that conserved pectoralis major and minor and the level III of axillary lymph nodes. The latter was associated with less postoperative morbidity and improved quality of life. The idea of limited breast tissue resection was introduced in the 1970s by Umberto Veronesi and led to further minimizations of surgery in BC patients until breast conservation became the standard of care for early-stage disease. In the 1990s, intraoperative lymphatic mapping and the concept of sentinel lymph node (SLN) biopsy (SLNB) have been developed. SLNB has replaced axillary lymph node dissection (ALND) to be the standard procedure for axillary staging in patients with clinically node-negative BC. Many women have since been spared ALND, including those with negative SLNB or with SLNs involved with micrometastases (0.2-2 mm in size). In the last decade, evidence gathered from new clinical trials suggests that ALND may be safely omitted even in BC patients with 1 or 2 positive SLNs if adjuvant radiotherapy is delivered.