Eugenia Tognotti

The devastating influenza pandemic known as 'Spanish flu', which killed at least 20 million people all over the world in 1918, was responsible for the first bitter blow inflicted on triumphant bacteriology, fortified by the series of resounding successes achieved in identifying the pathogenic agents of terrible diseases such as anthrax, cholera, tuberculosis, plague, and syphilis. Over-confidence and the idea, born of the Pasteur revolution, that every infectious disease was caused by a bacterium, had led the scientific community to accept the theory put forward by the German bacteriologist, Richard Pfeiffer, who, in 1892, believed he had identified the pathogenic influenza agent in a bacterium, Haemophilus influenzae. But, while the most appalling epidemic ever to sweep through the world since the 'Black Death' of the 1300s was still raging, the scientific community had to admit that influenza originated not from a microbe, but from a virus. This article aims to reconstruct the enlightening and little-known cultured/scientific events and issues of the dramatic crisis that bacteriology experienced in the autumn of 1918, with the consequent simultaneous collapse of both the 'Pfeiffer doctrine' on the microbial origin of influenza and the illusion of a world free of infectious diseases. This was an illusion destined to surface again at the end of the century and collapse with the advent of AIDS.

The devastating influenza pandemic known as 'Spanish flu', which killed at least 20 million people all over the world in 1918, was responsible for the first bitter blow inflicted on triumphant bacteriology, fortified by the series of resounding successes achieved in identifying the pathogenic agents of terrible diseases such as anthrax, cholera, tuberculosis, plague, and syphilis. Over-confidence and the idea, born of the Pasteur revolution, that every infectious disease was caused by a bacterium, had led the scientific community to accept the theory put forward by the German bacteriologist, Richard Pfeiffer, who, in 1892, believed he had identified the pathogenic influenza agent in a bacterium, Haemophilus influenzae. But, while the most appalling epidemic ever to sweep through the world since the 'Black Death' of the 1300s was still raging, the scientific community had to admit that influenza originated not from a microbe, but from a virus. This article aims to reconstruct the enlightening and little-known cultured/scientific events and issues of the dramatic crisis that bacteriology experienced in the autumn of 1918, with the consequent simultaneous collapse of both the 'Pfeiffer doctrine' on the microbial origin of influenza and the illusion of a world free of infectious diseases. This was an illusion destined to surface again at the end of the century and collapse with the advent of AIDS.

Negli anni 1979/80, per una esigenza di confronto interdisciplinare sulla problematica femminile e di apporto alla applicazione corretta delle leggi che riguardavano in particolare le donne, viene organizzato dalle docenti della Facoltà di Magistero per le discipline di Storia ...

The once-prevalent disease known as chlorosis, that for centuries has been considered as typical of young unmarried women, is--in the history of Medicine--one of the few for which the abundant medical literature allow to assign the exact date of beginning in the sixteenth century--and its disappearance in early twentieth century. Origin and history of chlorosis--along four centuries--are an intriguing example of how sickness is not only related to the history of medical science, but it is also deeply rooted to the history of the imaginary, mentalities, culture and social trends. But that's not all. In general, through the history of chlorosis it is possible to focus some important issues: the transformation of puberty and adolescence in medical problems; the growing medicalization of the society that is reflected in the gradual inclusion into the scientific medical discourse of social and cultural issues (the status, the emancipation of women, etc...). Using a range of medical w...

Between 1885 and 1892--a period in which great advances have been made in techniques and practice of the young science of microbiology--Camillo Golgi provided a notable contribution to malariology. Continuing studies and researches of Roman malariologists Ettore Marchiafava (1847-1935) and Angelo Celli (1857-1914), on the malarial parasites--described by the French military physician Alphonse Laveran--he studied the reproduction cycles of the Plasmodium in human blood (Golgi cycles) and elucidated the temporal coincidence between the recurrent chills and fever with the rupture and release of merozoites into the blood stream (Golgi law). He also demonstrated that the so-called tertian and quartan intermittent fevers are due to the presence in the blood of two different protozoan organisms Plasmodium malariae and Plasmodium vivax (Alphonse Laveran believed that there was only one species, Oscillaria malariae). These observations made it possible to diagnose and treat the disease. He e...

In the same decade during which Vienna government was proceeding to the rearrangement of the Medical Faculty of the University of Pavia, Savoy government started the reform of Cagliari and Sassari Universities. The programme of medical studies to be introduced in the "restored" Universities aroused an important debate which involved the government of Turin, the local authorities and the Magistrature. The main points concerned the teachings to be started, the programmes and the texts to be adopted, the methods and contents of teaching. The range of ideas aiming to conform island medical Faculties to the progress of science, gave life to the critique of a teaching model, still ruled by the Galenic authority and by metaphysical etiological explanations, which ignored the physiological and pathological reality revealed by the anatomical study methodically on performed corpses. The new programme of studies admitted the teaching of surgery, which had completely disappeared in th...

During 1946-1950, the Rockefeller Foundation conducted a large-scale experiment in Sardinia to test the feasibility of indigenous vector species eradication. The interruption of malaria transmission did not require vector eradication, but with a goal of developing a new strategy to fight malaria, the choice was made to wage a rapid attack with a powerful new chemical. Costing millions of dollars, 267 metric tons of DDT were spread over the island. Although malaria was eliminated, the main objective, complete eradication of the vector, was not achieved. Despite its being considered almost eradicated in the mid-1940s, malaria 60 years later is still a major public health problem throughout the world, and its eradication is back on the global health agenda.

In the new millennium, the centuries-old strategy of quarantine is becoming a powerful component of the public health response to emerging and reemerging infectious diseases. During the 2003 pandemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome, the use of quarantine, border controls, contact tracing, and surveillance proved effective in containing the global threat in just over 3 months. For centuries, these practices have been the cornerstone of organized responses to infectious disease outbreaks. However, the use of quarantine and other measures for controlling epidemic diseases has always been controversial because such strategies raise political, ethical, and socioeconomic issues and require a careful balance between public interest and individual rights. In a globalized world that is becoming ever more vulnerable to communicable diseases, a historical perspective can help clarify the use and implications of a still-valid public health strategy.

After plague, a millennial presence - like malaria and smallpox- in the ecological system of Mediterranean area , a new disease, cholera - which left in 1817 its ancient epidemic corner in South Asia - did produce a new microbial unification in consequence of the development of the steamships (about 1810), the railways (1830), and the construction of the Suez Canal (1869). Its arrival in Europe in the age of the industrial revolution and colonization, had a tremendous impact and revisited atavistic fears that had accompanied the plague. Exotic disease, turned into an European scourge by the innovation of transport, and the speed and intensification of trade, cholera contributed to spread the perception - particularly after the opening of the Suez Canal - that the world was growing at an unprecedented rate and that it was becoming increasingly interconnected and "exposed" to the importation of diseases. The early response of European states to limit the spread of cholera had implied arbitrary and unequal quarantine regulations at various ports that created great burdens on the international trade. The need to harmonise quarantine and share epidemiological information on disease surveillance led them to promote a multilateral diplomatic forum. After the first International Sanitary Conference, opened in Paris on 23 July 1851, at the initiative of France, were held ten international conferences on health, two of which were dedicated to cholera. In this report, I will focus on the impact of an "exotic" disease such as cholera in Nineteenth Century Europe and on the long and heated controversy on the aetiology of cholera that divided for decades contagionists and anticontagionists, influencing the decisions taken at the International Sanitary Conferences, convened largely under the pressure of the fear of epidemic and the threat represented by the “bacteriological exchange” in the Mecca, after the opening of the Suez Canal (1869).

The rapid changes that syphilis underwent after the first major outbreak that occurred in Naples in the mid-1490s are believed to constitute the first well-documented example of a human disease. The new plague was of exceptional virulence, highly contagious and caused severe ulceration of the part of the body that was first infected (often the genitals), pustules, pain, and itching. According to medical and other 2 historical sources, the 'genius epidemics' changed some years after this onset, and a slower-progressing form of syphilis seems to have replaced the initial severe form, as do many virulent epidemic infectious diseases that appear in devastating forms in a previously uninfected population. But what exactly were the features of the disease at the moment of its appearance in Europe at the end of the fifteenth century? And how many years did it really take for the early, virulent form to be effectively replaced and become endemic? And what was the pace of these changes through the decades following the onset of the epidemic? In this work, I review these issues by way of the analysis of a large number of chronologically-ordered primary historical sources.

In the early history of medical
microbiology, investigations into the
causes of cholera played an essential role
not yet recognized by historians of
medicine. The shocking arrival of the
‘nineteenth century plague’, which had not
appeared in Europe prior to the second
pandemic in 1830, fuelled the debate on
the cause of the disease and the discussion
on its contagiousness, galvanizing the
research, as has happened in every age for
the most feared diseases.

Abstract
In the same way as AIDS in the 20th century, syphilis was the sexual scourge of the 16th century. Both of these
sexually transmitted diseases, AIDS and syphilis, placed women at the risk of becoming infected through sexual
intercourse within marriage. Nothing is known about the individual strategies of women during the first European
syphilis epidemic. On the basis of primary sources (in the form of archival material and personal letters), and of
literary sources, this article tries to shed light on the preventive measures and behavioural choices adopted in
Renaissance Italy. We take in account, in particular, the social and institutional context in which two structural
factors were acting: the large-scale war involving long separation of spouses, and the diffusion of prostitution which
offered more opportunities for men's extramarital sexuality

In the new millennium, the centuries-old strategy of
quarantine is becoming a powerful component of the public
health response to emerging and reemerging infectious
diseases. During the 2003 pandemic of severe acute respiratory
syndrome, the use of quarantine, border controls,
contact tracing, and surveillance proved effective in containing
the global threat in just over 3 months. For centuries,
these practices have been the cornerstone of organized
responses to infectious disease outbreaks. However, the
use of quarantine and other measures for controlling epidemic
diseases has always been controversial because
such strategies raise political, ethical, and socioeconomic
issues and require a careful balance between public interest
and individual rights. In a globalized world that is becoming
ever more vulnerable to communicable diseases, a historical
perspective can help clarify the use and implications of
a still-valid public health strategy.