Medicina nei secoli最新文献

The aim of this paper is to contextualize and analyze historically the birth and early development of the concept of countertransference, introduce by Freud in 1909. In order to do so, will be considered scientific publications, the epistolary and the historical information about the personal relationship between Freud and his students, and among them and some of their patients.

Allegedly kidnapped from a secret city in Central America, the "Aztec children" began a showman's career in the early-1850s. They died around 1900, after being observed by countless pathologists and ethnologists from Europe and the US. Most of the literature on the "Aztec children" has emphasized racial theories, the imperial gaze, and the character of "ethnological shows", where monstrosity and ethnicity were practically synonymous. Less attention has been paid to the fact that scientists continuously insisted that the case was false, an argument that instead of debunking the myth of the "Aztec children", contributed to establishing the "Aztecs" as "a matter of fact". In examining the case of the "Aztec children", this essay aims to explore what can be called the shifting nature or elusiveness of falsehood.

We provide an examination of the field of dysmorphology, a clinical speciality that in its current form combines a long history of inspection and display with the identification and representation of associated underlying molecular changes. The recognition and description of abnormal appearances is thus increasingly accompanied by genetic and other molecular investigations. Our analysis draws on our long-term ethnographic engagement with a UK clinical genetics service and the work of two clinical genetics teams within a regional teaching hospital. We document the intersection of genetic science with clinical work to suggest that while molecular testing often identifies the genetic basis for unusual appearances and abnormal development, it does not fully supplant clinical apperception and interpretation. The two modes of knowledge--the clinical and the biomedical--co-exist in the work and the discourse of dysmorphology practice. The contemporary dysmorphology clinic thus encapsulates the epistemological systems of modern medicine, grounded in the clinical gaze and on the classificatory systems of classic nosology. Within such a system of clinical knowledge, the 'monstrous' does not escape the boundaries of knowledge. Monstrous appearances are accommodated and domesticated within the classificatory systems of normal medicine.

This paper explores postwar American strategies regarding penicillin in Japan. Perceived as both an American gift and a symbol of reconstruction, penicillin played a singular role in Washington's postwar policies towards Europe and Japan. Washington encouraged US pharmaceutical companies to penetrate Europe but sought to protect intra-European trade. In Japan, however, importing penicillin from the US or establishing private American factories was forbidden. Jackson W. Foster implemented a smaller-scale, military-directed version of the US's wartime penicillin project. In this paper, it is argued that the MacArthur administration aimed to boost Japanese penicillin production and transfer American industrial culture to Japan. This was initially a major success. However, the Japanese pharmaceutical industry failed to break down barriers to market entry established by first movers and, consequently, was uncompetitive throughout the twentieth century. This paper regards the American penicillin project in Japan as a factor in the weakness of the postwar Japanese pharmaceutical industry.

We present here three interesting documents which allow us to have a quick look at some aspects of the professional life of Italian teachers of internal medicine at the end of XIX century. A typewritten copy of a letter sent, on 23 February 1877, by Augusto Murri, professor of internal medicine at the University of Bologna, to Francesco Crispi, Speaker of the Italian Parliament. This document was enclosed in a letter dated 6 March 1937 from Bartolo Nigrisoli, a distingued surgeon of Bologna, to Francesco Galdi, clinician of the University of Pisa. The third document is a handwritten reply from Galdi to Nigrisoli. Relevant information in all three documents are commented upon.

At the death of Cardinal Pietro Basadonna in 1684, his personal physician Romolo Spezioli wrote a report describing the disease, circumstances of death and autopsy findings of the illustrious prelate. This document, kept in the Biblioteca Civica at Jesi, is a significant attestation of the medical terminology and diagnostic and therapeutic procedures of the time. Even with the constraints that interpretation of a clinical account dating back over 300 years inevitably imposes, perusal of this report suggests that Cardinal Basadonna's demise could have been due to septic shock, consequent to a urinary infection caused by a bulky bladder stone.

The origin of epigenetics has been traditionally traced back to Conrad Hal Waddington's foundational work in 1940s. The aim of the present paper is to reveal a hidden history of epigenetics, by means of a multicenter approach. Our analysis shows that genetics and embryology in early XX century--far from being non-communicating vessels--shared similar questions, as epitomized by Thomas Hunt Morgan's works. Such questions were rooted in the theory of epigenesis and set the scene for the development of epigenetics. Since the 1950s, the contribution of key scientists (Mary Lyon and Eduardo Scarano), as well as the discussions at the international conference of Gif-sur-Yvette (1957) paved the way for three fundamental shifts of focus: 1. From the whole embryo to the gene; 2. From the gene to the complex extranuclear processes of development; 3. From cytoplasmic inheritance to the epigenetics mechanisms.