Practicing between earth and heaven : women healers in seventeenth-century Bologna

In the highly stratified medical system of seventeenth-century Bologna, women healers occupied a low-rank position. Officially women could practice medicine only as midwives or as holders of permits for the sale of patent medicines. Women were a relatively marginal group even within unauthorized medical practice. Of the criminal proceedings against unlicensed healers only 12% were directed against women. In contrast, women were prominent in religious healing-as shown by the record of healing miracles attributed to female saints, and the importance of female convents as centers of supernatural healing. The different status of women in each case might be related to the different role of the body in lay and religious medical practices. While contact with the "holy bodies" of the saints was absolutely central in religious healing, chealing with the body. was considered a mark of inferiority in lay medical practice

¿Hubo una Querella de las Mujeres en la medicina moderna?

Historians have often emphasized the anti-feminist role played by medical argument in the early modern Querelle des Femmes. In this article, I argue that this interpretation should be reconsidered. Plenty of evidence suggests that medicine played an important role on the pro-woman side of the Querelle, but so far this evidence has been analysed only piecemeal. When we review it together, a different story emerges, one in which proto-feminist arguments appear to be an influential and enduring aspect of early modern medical discourse, related to important new trends in early modern medicine. In this essay, I first look at the transformation of gender roles in humanism, and particularly in medical humanism, as they are indicated by two significant female voices in the Querelle, Nicole Liébault and Lucrezia Marinella, both daughters of physicians. I then examine one of the most striking novelties of early modern medicine, the emergence of medical writings on women’s diseases, newly addressed, to some extent, to a female public. It is especially in these texts that we find physicians voicing pro-women arguments, so much so that these works should be considered, in my view, as an integral part of the Querelle. On the basis of this evidence, I conclude that there was a Querelle des Femmes in early modern medicine. Older, scholastic views on women were challenged by some humanist physicians, and this had a profound and enduring impact on early modern medical culture.Los historiadores han destacado con frecuencia el papel que desempeñó la argumentación médica en la Querella de las Mujeres, en un sentido antifeminista. En este artículo, sostengo que tal interpretación debería reconsiderarse. Numerosas evidencias sugieren que la medicina desempeñó un papel en el bando favorable a las mujeres en el marco de la Querella, pero hasta ahora esas evidencias tan sólo se han analizado de manera fragmentaria. Cuando se examinan conjuntamente, lo que emerge es una historia bien distinta, en la que los argumentos protofeministas se muestran como un aspecto influyente y perdurable del discurso médico, en relación con importantes tendencias de la medicina moderna. En este artículo, considero en primer lugar la transformación de los roles de género en el humanismo, particularmente en el humanismo médico, tal como indican dos voces femeninas significativas en la Querella, las de Nicole Liébault y Lucrezia Marinella, ambas hijas de médicos. A continuación, examino una de las novedades más llamativas de la medicina moderna, la emergencia de los escritos médicos sobre enfermedades de las mujeres, dirigidos por primera vez, en cierta medida, a un público femenino. Es ante todo en estos textos donde encontramos a médicos que dan voz a argumentos favorables a las mujeres, hasta tal punto de que esas obras deberían considerarse, en mi opinión, como parte integral de la Querella. A partir de esa evidencia, concluyo que existió una Querella de las Mujeres en la medicina moderna. Algunos médicos humanistas desafiaron los argumentos más antiguos, de carácter escolástico, sobre las mujeres, y ello tuvo un impacto profundo y perdurable en la cultura médica moderna

Chemical markers for the characterization of bioaerosol

Bioaerosol is commonly defined as aerosolized particles, with a biological origin, spread into the air by a variety of abiotic and biotic mechanisms. The size of bioaerosol can range from several nanometers to a few hundred micrometres in aerodynamic diameter. Examples of bioaerosols include fungal and bacterial spores/cells, fungal hyphae, pollen, viruses and amoebae, algae, lichen, archaea, aggregates of these particles, and fragments of larger organisms including leaf litter, skin scales, animal and plant debris. Metabolites and excreta are also included in this topic. In these last years the knowledge about indoor and occupational bioaerosol exposure and related diseases has significantly increased. Biological particles have been linked to mucous membrane irritation, allergy, asthma, inflammatory lung diseases, hypersensitivity pneumonitis and so on . The use of biomarkers as a tool for the determination of bioaerosol has often been suggested. The basis of this approach is that bioaerosol components contain chemical compounds that can be used as markers of larger and/or bioactive structures. The main objective of our research is the identification and quantitation of dipicolinic and muramic acids, ergosterol, poliols, amino acids and proteins as markers of bacterial, fungal spores/cells and generic bioaerosol, in both indoor and outdoor airborne particulate matter. To achieve this purpose, methods of extraction and analysis by chromatographic techniques coupled to mass spectrometry of different classes of compounds from particulate matter of different size (ultrafine, fine and coarse), collected in proper sampling campaigns, have been developed

A liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry method for simultaneous analysis of 46 atmospheric particulate-phase persistent organic pollutants and comparison with gas chromatography/mass spectrometry,

A novel multi-analyte method for the simultaneous determination of 46 compounds of environmental concern, most of them belonging to the category of persistent organic pollutants, was developed using high-performance liquid chromatography and the results were compared to those obtained by gas chromatography. This study was performed in perspective of a cumulative exposure assessment of substances of health concern in environments where high levels, relatively to airborne particulate matter, can be found. The target compounds included polychlorinated biphenyls, brominated flame-retardants and derivatives of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The multi-analyte method was evaluated in air particulate matter in terms of reproducibility, linearity, recovery, limits of detection and quantification and matrix effect. The recovery was above 70% for all the analytes, whereas limits of quantification ranged between 23 and 390 pg.m(-3) in liquid chromatography and less than ten times in gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Matrix effect was generally negligible for both the techniques, except the case of the detection of oxygenated derivatives of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons by gas chromatography