ELECTROTHERAPY IN THE TREATMENT OF PATIENTS AFFECTED BY RABIES: EXPERIMENTS CONDUCTED AT THE “MAGGIORE” HOSPITAL OF MILAN IN 1865

During the nineteenth century, the scientific context of rabies treatment was weak due to the lack of the literature on specific nosology of the rabies disease, and unspecific and ineffective therapy approaches. Electrotherapy already represented an important therapeutic approach for nervous system diseases, although not specifically for rabies. In the present paper, the authors discuss the use of electrotherapy in the treatment of humans affected by rabies in an experimental study conducted at the Maggiore Hospital of Milan, with the aim of establishing the discovery of a possible specific therapy. By analyzing the printed scientific sources available in the Braidense Library of Milan, the authors describe four experiments conducted on patients of different ages. Symptoms and effects both during and after the electrotherapy are also highlighted. The experiments demonstrated that electricity is not an effective therapy in the treatment of rabies, being rather able to cause serious functional and organic alterations in all the patients. Analyzing the Milanese experiments, the authors reported specific Italian history of a scientific and medical approach to rabies at the end of the 18th century, which led to the promotion of health education, reinforced prevention strategies and opened the way to the vaccination era

EGFR inhibitor as second-line therapy in a patient with mutant RAS metastatic colorectal cancer: circulating tumor DNA to personalize treatment

A 47-year-old male patient presented in March 2016 to our unit with a palpable painless left supraclavicular mass. A whole-body contrastenhanced computed tomography (CT) scan revealed a left supraclavicular lymphadenopathy, transverse colon thickening (3 cm), multiple chest and abdominal lymphadenopathies, and peritoneal carcinomatosis. Colonoscopy revealed a bleeding area at 15 cm from the anal verge; biopsy was performed, and the result was negative for a primary cancer

2008 Progress Report on Brain Research

Highlights new research on various disorders, nervous system injuries, neuroethics, neuroimmunology, pain, sense and body function, stem cells and neurogenesis, and thought and memory. Includes essays on arts and cognition and on deep brain stimulation

Healing Bodies: the ancient origins of massages and Roman practices

The practice of body manipulation with therapeutic aims has been used in the Western world since the origins of Hippocratic medicine. By retracing the therapeutic use of massage as a therapeutic, preventive and educational practice, the authors attempt to highlight the concepts, techniques and methods of massage and the manipulation of the body in order to offer a valuable and useful historical reconstruction concerning ancient medicine. The study on the relationship between culture, diseases and medicine constitute a significant part of the historical medical research carried out within the Research Project of National Interest PRIN entitled ‘Disease, health and lifestyles in Rome: from the Empire to the early Middle Ages’ funded by the Ministry of Education, MIUR University Research in 201

Learning, Arts, and the Brain: The Dana Consortium Report on Arts and Cognition

Reports findings from multiple neuroscientific studies on the impact of arts training on the enhancement of other cognitive capacities, such as reading acquisition, sequence learning, geometrical reasoning, and memory

Feet and fertility in the healing temples: A symbolic communication system between gods and men?

Anatomical ex-votos of feet have always been interpreted as representing the unhealthy part of the body for which patients were asking healing. However, according to the archaeological data and literary sources, another interpretation is also possible: the purpose of this article is to focus on the strong relationship between feet and fertility in the ancient world by cross-referencing the available archaeological evidence with the scientific data relating to this topic. That shed light on an important aspect of the Healing Temples in Greek and Roman medicine

Low-speed wind tunnel performance of high-speed counterrotation propellers at angle-of-attack

The low-speed aerodynamic performance characteristics of two advanced counterrotation pusher-propeller configurations with cruise design Mach numbers of 0.72 were investigated in the NASA Lewis 9- by 15-Foot Low-Speed Wind Tunnel. The tests were conducted at Mach number 0.20, which is representative of the aircraft take-off/landing flight regime. The investigation determined the effect of nonuniform inflow on the propeller performance characteristics for several blade angle settings and a range of rotational speeds. The inflow was varied by yawing the propeller model to angle-of-attack by as much as plus or minus 16 degrees and by installing on the counterrotation propeller test rig near the propeller rotors a model simulator of an aircraft engine support pylon and fuselage. The results of the investigation indicated that the low-speed performance of the counterrotation propeller configurations near the take-off target operating points were reasonable and were fairly insensitive to changes in model angle-of-attack without the aircraft pylon/fuselage simulators installed on the propeller test rig. When the aircraft pylon/fuselage simulators were installed, small changes in propeller performance were seen at zero angle-of-attack, but fairly large changes in total power coefficient and very large changes of aft-to-forward-rotor torque ratio were produced when the propeller model was taken to angle-of-attack. The propeller net efficiency, though, was fairly insensitive to any changes in the propeller flowfield conditions near the take-off target operating points

L'astragalo di Dario

After hunting, the king of Persians Darius I gets off a horse in a quite rough way and gets a sprain in which the astragalus becomes dislocated. The wise Egyptian physicians on duty at his court cannot heal the shooting pain which keeps him awake for a week. By chance, Democedes, the famous physician from Croton, happens to be at Persian court as a slave and Darius, finding out about it, doesn’t esitate to commit himself to his healing which turns out to be providential. This tale, which in its richest and most interesting version came to us thanks to the Greek historian Herodotus, allows not only a reflection upon the ancient therapeutical approaches to the sprains, thanks to the comparison with Hippocratic treaties on fractures and articulations, but also some anatomical considerations on the interaction between astragalus and the articulations it is connected with

DE CARBONE, SIVE CARBUNCOLO IL CARBONCHIO NELLA PUBBLICISTICA ITALIANA DALLA RESTAURAZIONE ALL’UNITÀ

At the origins of the bacteriological debate, many paths cross medical and veterinary history all over Europe. Reading the Annali Universali di Medicina, an Italian Journal published in Milan between 1817 and 1888, allow us to underline the perceived social role of Hygiene, the newborn medical specialty interpreting epidemics and zoonosis as consequences of wrongful economical, social and health politicies. In the issues of Annali printed just before the unity of Italy, anthrax can be assumed as a paradigmatic model to reconstruct the scientific and medical debate about aethiopathogenesis of infectious diseases crossing the nineteenth century; its reflections in the printed journals and magazines pages (we particularly refer to) provides interesting informations about the public perception of medical theories concerning the concept of contagion, the idea that infectious diseases can derive from a bodily poisoning, the theory of ‘poisonous fields’, according to which animals can contract anthrax by simply herding in high nitrogen content soils

Maschile e femminile nella trasmissione dei caratteri ereditari. Da Atene a Sparta

The selection of individuals through eugenic criteria was a widespread habit in the ancient Greek society, especially at Sparta where εὐγενέτης is a very meaningful word: it expresses both the social high rank of Spartiates and the physical perfection the community requires. Not surprisingly the same term referred to animals means “well breeding”. However, though in Athens the patrilineal transfer of hereditary characters has a higher juridical value, according to the oldest embryological beliefs, at Sparta woman’s role in the eugenic determination of the race turns out to be more active and not limited to that of mere container. Thereafter, came the necessity of physical training and of a diet during pregnancy to offer the community a healthy birth. As the male trains himself for war and his glory consists in returning victorious or dying for his fatherland, similarly also the Spartan woman prepares to her utmost challenge, that is: her delivery, which may even lead to death