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The Lido of Venice is an island twelve kilometers long and between a hundred and one thousand meters wide. The citizans of Venice and many turists can't imagine today, what Lido was some centuries ago Initially totally sandy, it was fertilized by means of a continuous supply of Venice's garbage (the "scoasse"). In addition to the "scoasse", damaged foodstuffs and the waste of the vegetable market were also sent to the Lido. Other fertilisers originated from the dung of the cattle and sheep arriving by ship from Dalmatia, which were landed on the Lido, where they could pasture before slaughter to regain weight lost during their voyage. The sheep dung, especially, was important for the proto-industrial production of saltpetre, a material of the greatest strategic importance, like uranium at the present time. Saltpetre is the most important component of gun powder, which was the only explosive known up to the second half of 19th century. There were plans to establish an "artificial nitriary" in the Lido, making use of the garbage and of the animal waste. In all probability, the most bulky item ever buried in the Lido is the corpse of an enraged elephant, which escaped from its cage on the Riva degli Schiavoni where it was performing during the 1819 carnival, and was killed by a cannon shot in a church where it took refuge. The original title of the paper, published in Italian is: V. Giormani, II Lido di Venezia "scoassera" della città. I montoni dalmati e l'elefante del 1819, in Atti del III Convegno nazionale di storia della medicina veterinaria, Lastra a Signa (Firenze), 23-24 settembre 2000, a cura di Alba Veggetti, Brescia, 2001, pp. 333-339. Other information has been added in order to facilitate non-italians readers and articles appearing after the publication of the Proceedings of the Third National Congress for the History of Veterinary Medicine, Lastra a Signa, (Florence), Italy, have also been used. I am deeply grateful to Mrs. Mary Moors for the translation from Italian and for editorial assistance in the production of this article.

In this paper I describe the context and goals of Francisco Vallés In IV librum Meteorologicorum commentaria (1558). Vallés' work stands as a landmark because it interprets a work of Aristotle's natural philosophy specifically for medical doctors and medical theory. Vallés' commentary is representative of new understandings of Galenic-Hippocratic medicine that emerged as a result of expanding textual knowledge. These approaches are evident in a number of sixteenth-century commentaries on Meteorologica IV; in particular the works of Pietro Pomponazzi, Lodovico Boccadiferro, Jacob Schegk, and Francesco Vimercati. Vallés' conviction that Meteorologica IV is relevant to medical knowledge depends on his understanding of Aristotle's theory of homeomerous substances and their relation to composite substances. The application of Meteorologica IV to medical topics became commonplace in the following years, and this Aristotelian book became widely known as a bridge between natural philosophy and medicine.

The Museum of History of Medicine preserves a polychromatic plastic model drawned to a scale of one to one hundred. This model shows an hospital in Rome where, in the Middle Ages, it used to hospitalize lepers. The buildings were placed extra pomerium in account of sanitary reasons. They were composed of a church, that still does exist, and of a leper house, that was destroyed in 1938. The leper house became part of the Santo Spirito in Saxia hospital just in the XVIII century.

In view of a renovation of psychiatric assistance, the authors briefly deal with the history of the social attitude to this issue. Some evidence is taken from the archives of Santa Maria della Pietà, the major institution in Rome for the control of "madness".

We discuss the relevance of ancient DNA studies for novel approaches to a variety of fields of scientific inquiry, including population and evolutionary genetics, prehistoric archaeology, paleopathology and history of human diseases. To exemplify the potential of ancient DNA research, we provide accounts of studies currently conducted at our laboratories in four different areas: 1) origins of the dog and phylogeny of prehistoric Italian canids; 2) paleogenetics of ancient Roma; 3) antiquity for variant alleles implicated in disease predisposition; 4) molecular investigation of pathologic lesions in Italian mummies of Renaissance age. The implications of the results obtained are briefly outlined.

The Museum of History of Medicine of the University of Rome "La Sapienza" has a rich collection of probes and metal catheters, some of which in surgical kits. Tracing the history of catheters, the authors follow the technical evolution in the field of urology techniques, also highlighting the intelligent craft of artisans, surgeons, barbers - and the industrial effort to ameliorate techniques. The use and the crafting of these instruments are to be related to new knowledge in the fields of urethral, vesical and prostatic occlusion. Italian contribution of the field is stressed, highlighting the original experience of Michele Troja, who invented and diffused metal catheters covered in caouthouc.

Andreas Vesalius described the human thyroid lobes very distinctly in his De humani corporis fabrica in 1543 calling them glandulae laryngis. Before him Leonardo da Vinci had depicted the human thyroid gland in his anatomical drawings. The first publication which could be called a textbook of human anatomy, because it was used as the basis for cathedral teaching in human anatomy for about two centuries, was the Anothomia of Mundinus Liucius, Mondino de'Liuzzi, published in 1316. In the chapter on the blood vessels of the neck he describes two glands, which he calls amigdalae, situated under the longitudinal muscles and below the larynx. Their function should be 1) to wet the trachea; 2) to fill the grove below the larynx because the neck was broader above due to the large larynx but much slender below because of the narrower trachea. And 3): they should function as a shield for the deep arteries and veins. Later anatomists at the beginning of the 15th and the 16th century, like Achillini, Massa and Zerbus, all used the text of Mundinus but obviously they tried to locate the glands of Mundinus to the tonsils apparently only because he used the denomination amigdalae. Berengario da Carpi, however, who was a much experienced anatomist, published a large treatise Commentaria super Anothomia Mundini in which he confirms the location of the glands of Mundini below the larynx. Obviously the two glands in the neck Mundinus mentions are the two thyroid lobes. According to his description they cannot be the tonsils because 1) of their location below the larynx, and 2) their function of adequating the appearance of the neck and 3) shielding, at least to some extent, the deep vessels in the neck. Before Mundini there is no similar description of the anatomy of the human neck in the literature, so what he describes must he based upon his own experience. Furthermore, he did the autopsies himself and did not use the assistance of a prosector as the professors after him used to do.

A Decree of 1377 of the Rector of Dubrovnik-Ragusa officially issued quarantine. The obligation of a stay for 4 weeks on a separate site (islands or caravenserai) originated mainly from the need to protect the safety and quality of the commercial network and merchandise rather than for medical aetiopathogenetic purposes. The well documented network of representatives of the Republic in European ports and cities and the attention of the Ragusan rulers to medicine (the best physicians were sought in the Italian Universities) favored the first official quarantining as a legal system aimed at protecting the economic interests of the city during the golden age of the Republic. This included the 17th century lifetime of the physician George Armenius-Baglivi, who grew up in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of Ragusa, which explains his marked inclination to develop his medical skills in the best Italian universities, coming from Ragusa to Lecce and finally to Rome. How much uncertainty and obscurity does the passage of time cast over history, if false displaces true even for recent events, which took place right before our eyes?

The paleopathological study of 40 Italian Renaissance mummies has allowed us to perform about 20 diagnoses, of which 5 concern infectious (smallpox, hepatitis, condyloma, syphilis and pneumonia), 4 metabolic (obesity, atherosclerosis, gallstones and uric acid nephrolithiasis), 2 articular (DISH and rheumatoid arthritis) and 2 neoplastic (skin apithelioma and colon adenocarcinoma) diseases. The mummy of an anonymous child, dated back to the 16th century (C14=1569 +/- 60), presented a diffuse vesiculo-pustular exanthema. Macroscopic aspects and regional distribution suggested smallpox, while EM reavealed many egg-shaped, virus-like particles (250 x 50 nm), with a central dense core. Following incubation with anti-smallpox virus antiserum and protein A-gold complex immunostaining, the particles resulted completely covered with protein A-gold. These results clearly show that this Neapolitan child died of a severe form of smallpox some four centuries ago. The mummy of Maria of Aragon, Marquise of Vasto (1503-1568), reavealed on the left arm an oval, cutaneous ulcer (15x10 nm) with linen dressing. Indirect immunofluorescence with anti-treponema pallidum antibody identified a large number of filaments with the morphological characteristics of fluorescent treponemes. EM evidenced typical spirochetes, with axial fibril. These findings clearly demonstrate a treponemal, probably venereal, infection. The mummy of Ferrante I of Aragon, King of Naples (1431-1494), revealed an adenocarcinoma extensively infiltrating the muscles of the small pelvis. A molecular study of the neoplastic tissue evidenced a typical mutation of the K-ras gene codon 12:the normal sequence GGT (glycine) was altered into GAT (aspartic acid). At present this genetic change is the most frequent mutation of the K-ras gene in sporadic colorectal cancer. The alimentary "environment" of the Neapolitan court of the XV century, with its abundance of natural alimentary alkylating agents, well explains this acquired mutation. These and other diseases as, for example, a fatal puerperal complication, a thyroid goiter, a case of Wilson's cirrhosis, some cases of anthracosis and other peculiar traumatic conditions, such as a mortal stab-wound, can elucidate the pathocenosis of the wealthy classes of the Italian Renaissance.

Several kind of sources testify that, since XIVth century, people living in Grosseto during the summer moved to healthy towns located in neighbouring hills. Starting from the XVIth century malaria became a true scourge for people living in Maremma (especially day labourers and soldiers), and local "signorie" planned some attempts to improve their condition. However, only after the unification of Italy, and the discovery of the role of anopheles in transmitting the etiological agent, the fight against malaria acquired a scientific basis. At the end of the last century, the epidemiology of malaria in the Maremma Grossetana was studied by outstanding scientists (Koch, Grassi and Gosio among others). The present essay explores the archival sources concerning the history of malaria in the Maremma Grossetana from the beginning of "estataura" to antimalarial campaigns carried out during the first three decades of the XXth Century.

The inadequacy of the Galenic theory concerning the effect of medicines prompted Campanella, after Fernel, to define a theory of the occult operation capable of curing those illnesses Hippocrates called "divine", thanks to a "metaphysical science". In his Medicinalia (1609), it is the "primalitary" constitution of living beings - the basic structure of reality whose specific funciton consists in accounting for occult operations in nature in general, and for the occult virtues of some remedies in particular - that is to generate the rules for applying the various medicines to the corresponding parts of the body. Yet its being occult prevents it from providing the medicinal practitioner with the laws of adaptation to its objects. I show that, for Campanella, as well as for Fernel, the solution most probably lies in the use of "method". For, like Fernel, he methodically divides the realm of the occult, the Platonic dichotomy, applied to diseases and remedies, allowing a rational adaptation of the latter to the former, without knowing the nature of either. Thus medical practice possesses its own logic deriving from the nature common to man, the illnesses affecting him, and the medicines that can cure them. Medical efficacy then depends on a capacity for the methodical analysis of natural beings in their complexity, and for taking this into account in therapeutic applications.

After an historical introduction about ancient institutional regime of present Littoria/Latina province (until 1870 organized in Naples kingdom and Papal States), this essay is going to a swift analysis of marshes who reigned all over the land from the periphery of Rome to Fondi, when transient sheperds and woodmen were the only human beings of marshy land. So teachers for that unlettered people came into these lands, and so physicians came to fight against malary, first symbiotic enemy of man. So drainages were tried from Roman's epoch to Medieval and Illuministic one. We'll see Popes, feudal ladies and at last drainage trusts, all working to improve human life before the birth of Latina province. New cities and towns were born just during these trials; after the experiences of Angelo Celli, Italian Red Cross and Istituto per il risanamento antimalarico della regione pontina, many laws looked to medical aid for workers in malaric zones (exactly specified in topographic maps). In 1934 the Comitato provinciale antimalarico was introduced all over italian territory with the R.D.n. 1265.

The scientific accomplishments of Girolamo Fabrici d'Acquapendente are critically considered. Special attention is devoted to his position in relationship with the views of contemporary Paduan scientists such as Galileo, Santorio, Sarpi. Fabrici appears to represent the highest point of the XVI century morphological research, being in the same time innovative for his new observations and conservative for his substantially Aristotelian way of thinking.

Medicine in the setting of the royal courts of Europe from Renaissance to the Enlightment has been recently discussed, but Italian court medicine has been so far very largely neglected. In this article central problems are the relations between court medicine and academic medicine and the social status of the court physician in the fourteenth century. Both problems are investigated in two Italian courts: the Visconti court in Milan and Pavia and the Aragonese court in Sicily. the list of the Visconti physicians and astrologers attests that they had all been celebrated university professors and that their condition as personal physicians to Galeazzo and Gian Galeazzo was far superior to the academic one in honour and salaries. Their role could also be representative and political. This was expecially the case of Ruggero de Camma, who was chosen as personal physician to the Aragonese king Martino II and appointed by him as first protomedico for political reasons.

An outline is presented of the biography, works and writings of Girolamo Fabrici d'Acquapendente. During his long career as professor in the University of Padua (1565-1613), he brought at its splendor the time honored tradition of the local anatomical school, both as a teacher and as a scientist. His major contributions (among which are his pitture colorate d'anatomia, embriological studies, description of the venous valves, establishment of the first permanent anatomical amphitheater) are briefly commented upon.