Acta Medico-Historica Adriatica最新文献

Book Review/Prikaz knjige

Designed as a defensive system against the Ottoman Empire, the Austrian military border was doubled by a sanitary cordon, which served as a defense shield against epidemics. In order for this system to function adequately, the border patrol troops that served the House of Habsburg also needed protection against the diseases that threatened the empire. The present study brings into discussion the health problems that border guards from the Banat region experienced, a topic that remains largely unaddressed in the existing literature. By building on original archival research and the specialized work of the epoch, this article traces the main conditions, the means of tackling diseases, the remedies that were specifically local or those found within the European repertoire. It also sheds light on the support that the administrative apparatus offered to the troops, namely medical care in its material form (hospitals, quarantines, pharmacies, medicine, monetary assistance) and human form (the personnel hired at the borders: military doctors, surgeons, midwives, veterinarians). This article concludes that the entire correspondence from the center directed at the local authorities in Banat and vice versa reflects in a unique and subtle way the level of medical knowledge of the time.

Based on a reading of the ethnographic accounts that were written in accordance with the Osnova za sabiranje i proučavanje građe o narodnom životu (Foundations for Collecting and Studying Materials about Folk Life) published in 1897, this paper attempts to outline some of the features of wet-nursing as specific breastfeeding related practices in rural areas at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century. Ethnographic accounts published in the Zbornik za narodni život i običaje južnih Slavena ( Journal of Folk Life and Traditions of South Slavs) that are, with some retrospective insights, mainly focused on what were then contemporary practices, are approached in this paper as sources of the ethnology and the history of everyday life. Through connecting passages on breastfeeding and also passages that refer indirectly to breastfeeding, this paper underlines the importance of differentiation between the practices of regular wet-nursing (caused by a mother’s illness or her problems with breastfeeding) and occasional wet-nursing (because of a mother’s temporary, short-term absence). This paper also deals with the issue of (material) compensation for wet-nursing and, connected to this, with the relation between women’s efforts to earn an income on the one hand and women’s solidarity on the other. It also deals with the issue of the professionalization of wet-nursing that is not covered in the questions from Osnova (Foundations for Collecting and Studying Materials about Folk Life) and is only indicated in ethnographic accounts from the Zbornik (Journal of Folk Life and Traditions of South Slavs).

Despite some earlier significant discoveries and widespread vaccination successful practices, the history of understanding immunological mechanisms is actually relatively short and associated only with the second half of the 20th century when, among other things, the laws of activation of these mechanisms are crucial for transplantation medicine. Among the first experts in Croatia who turned to these topics was Šime Vlahović. Born in Split, he graduated and received his PhD in Zagreb. He worked on the problems of transplant immunology from 1963 to 1965 at the eminent centers in the United States. He was the head of the Rijeka Department of Physiology at the Faculty of Medicine from 1965 to 1977, since 1976 as a full professor. He was the winner of the Ruđer Bošković award and many others, but his crucial contribution to the medical heritage of Rijeka and Croatia is certainly less known. Based on family archives and memories, this work will attempt to at least partially correct that gap. Thanks to the immunological preparation of Šime Vlahović, as well as, of course, a large team led by surgeon Vinko Frančišković, in January 1971, the first kidney transplant was performed in Croatia from a living relative (mother to son), a year later from a cadaver, and in the decades following that, an experimental liver and pancreas transplant program has been developed in Rijeka. Today, we can only speculate about the intriguing directions of the development of the Rijeka Transplant and Immunology School, which would have been led by Šime Vlahović, had he not passed away at the age of less than 45.

Quṭb al-Din Shīrāzī (1236-1311 AD), the Persian polymath had great contributions to the fields of philosophy, mathematics, medicine, astronomy, music, literature, and Islamic studies. He lived during the Ilkhanid kingdom in Iran. He wrote an autobiography in the preface of his medical manuscript, al-Tuḥfa al-Sa‘dīya. He discussed his views on science and then, he explained his life story, in particular his education and contribution to science. He mentioned the reasons that led him to write al-Tuḥfa al-Sa‘dīya, his main medical work. As a great polymath, he traveled to many countries, and his words cleared the scientific atmosphere of 14th century AD. Also, he directly introduced his teachers and their abilities and works. Furthermore, scientists who worked on the Canon of Medicine had commentaries on this book, which were comprehensively introduced in this autobiography.

Male circumcision has been perceived differently in different cultures. In modern times, if it is a non-medical indication, circumcision becomes the starting point of many ethical and other discussions. Its rootedness in Christianity is fixed, among other things, in sacral art and iconography. This article presents five sacral images of the Circumcision of Christ from the holdings of the Croatian sacral heritage with the aim of noticing their iconographic and sacral-medical values. In this article, it is presented the results of field research related to the identification and medical-iconographic presentation of the motive for the circumcision of Jesus Christ in the area of the northern and central Adriatic coast. Five such paintings have been recorded and will be described and compared with similar works by European masters. These are the works of Venetian and Central European provenance and were created between the 16th and 18th centuries. The basic traditional Jewish iconography is visible in all the paintings but modified according to current religious standards. These depictions from the area of Croatia contextualizing and filling in the gaps in verbal records on this topic in our region fit Croatia into an undoubted component of the European Judeo-Christian heritage and when it comes to rare iconographic depictions.

Professor Ivo Horvat, a world-renowned Croatian scientist, botanist, and university teacher, was born in Čazma on October 7, 1897. After finishing the Classical Gymnasium in Zagreb in 1916, he graduated from the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Philosophy in 1920 and obtained his Ph.D. in botany on July 31, 1920. From his invaluable scientific and educational heritage, we have selected out for this occasion only a small part dedicated to the period from June 11, 1947 to April 23, 1963, in which Prof. Horvat worked at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Zagreb. He worked in a wide range of both natural and biomedical veterinary sciences: from systematic botany, ecology, and environmental protection to the study of phylogeny, floristic, and vegetation research, including vegetation mapping and scientific-organizational work. Following the bibliographic and archival sources of the original documents, the given data represent a brief overview of Prof. Horvat’s contribution to phytocoenological work and an overview of scientific and educational heritage with an emphasis on the years spent at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Zagreb.

Hypersexuality disorder (or sexual addiction or excessive sexual drive or compulsive sexual behaviour disorder) is a controversial condition that is present in the International Classification of Disease but not in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders. It is defined as a clinical syndrome characterised by a persistent pattern of failure to control intense, repetitive sexual impulses or urges resulting in repetitive sexual behaviour. The condition is more prevalent in men than in women. Some medical conditions were described in fictional literature before their formal recognition in medicine, like Huntington disease, Pickwick syndrome, and Munchausen syndrome. The aim of this article is to analyse the fictional character of Charlotta Castelli Glembay from Miroslav Krleža’s play Messrs Glembays from 1928. Krleža presented a woman with a sexual drive that could be described as uncontrollable, organic (physical) in origin, and different from love and affection (that she also experienced, but only with one particular man). The author gave a special name for her condition – erotic intelligence. This sexual behaviour has distressing and devastating consequences. This paper will argue that the play depicts hypersexuality disorder in a woman, with a designation of its aetiology. In concordance with the prevailing attitudes of the time (the early 20th century), hypersexuality in women had negative attributions.

Even though the absence of the body prevents sure conclusions, the death of Alexander the Great remains a hot topic of retrospective diagnosis. Due to the serious mishandling of ancient sources, the scientific literature had Alexander dying of every possible natural cause. In previous works, the hypothesis that typhoid fever killed Alexander was proposed, based on the presence of the remittent fever typical of this disease in the narrations of Plutarch and Arrian. Here we provide additional evidence for the presence of stupor, the second distinctive symptom of typhoid fever. In fact, based on the authority of Caelius Aurelianus and Galen, we demonstrate that the word ἄφωνος, used to describe the last moments of Alexander, is a technical word of the lexicon of the pathology of Hippocrates. Used by him, the word defines a group of diseases sharing a serious depression of consciousness and motility. The association of stupor with the remittent fever strengthens the typhoid fever hypothesis.

Medical history of the city of Rijeka is a rich treasure trove of events, celebrities and valuable innovations in the field of healthcare. The historical development of Rijeka was largely determined by her geopolitical position as a border town with a multicultural population, marked by strong conflicts of interest and numerous identity turmoil. The great exodus of the domicile population of Italian nationality after World War II has significantly changed the social picture of the city. Among many of such esuli (immigrants) were brothers Giovanni (b. 1932) and Abdon (b. 1933) Pamich, whose lives are reminiscent of the fate of many displaced people from Rijeka who were forced to live in exile after the war. After leaving their hometown during the formative years of their childhood, they had successful careers in Italy in the fields of medicine and healthcare. The older brother Giovanni became a successful surgeon and the younger Abdon a psychologist. Along with his positions as the head of general surgery at the Monfalcone and Gorizia Hospitals, Giovanni Pamich was teaching at the University of Trieste. Abdon Pamich collaborated with the best Italian tennis players in the field of sports psychology, and was a psychologist for the Italian handball team. They both practiced athletics, and Abdon Pamich won the silver medal in speed walking at the 1958 European Championships in Sweden and the gold medal at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. In addition to emphasizing the achievements of the two brothers in the field of medicine, this paper also addresses the position of the migrant, which is highlighted in Robert Covaz’s book “Abdon Pamich, memorie di un marciatore (Rome, 2016), an exciting biography of an emigrant from Rijeka. The paper also explores the concept of thematizing the limits of differences and experiences of migration of Rijeka residents facing the existential issues.