Grand Master Perellos : rheumatic fever and syphilis

It is not given to everyone to have his maladies made the subject-matter of a published book. Not so Grand Master Perellos (1697 ­ 1720) who lived to see a 104-page volume about his recalcitrant fevers printed in his lifetime.1 It all started with a letter written on February 15, 1708, by Malta's protomedico (Chief Government Medical Officer) Dr Arcangelo Grech2 at the instance of the Grand Master, addressed to the most eminent physician in Sicily, indirectly asking for guidance about the defiant fevers the Grand Master had fallen victim to. The letter, I believe, bears translation and reproduction.peer-reviewe

Grand Masters in the Cinquecento : their persona & death

The manuscript records of the Order of Malta understandably turn out to be rather stingy with information about the health and psychological profile of individuals. Unless illness, (e.g. insanity), hampered the proper discharge of their official functions, health remained a matter of eminently private domain. Similarly, the printed histories, foremost among all Giacomo Bosio's truly monumental and detailed chronicle of the Order from its foundation in Palestine to the year 1571, have very little about the medical problems and the passing away of dignitaries, including Grand Masters. Of course, this reticence or restraint were not peculiarities of `Maltese' recorders and historians. A `non-subjective' approach to chronicle responded closely to the ethos of the age. Why write history? The scope was to teach, in a manner faithful to truth and to theology, and to mould the spirit through learning, abstracting from personal interpolation and researches that pandered to purely subjective curiosity. One could say that, to this limited extent, history then respected privacy more than it does today.peer-reviewe

Petitions by medical practitioners 1632-1732

The very humble suppliche or petitions addressed by subjects to the Grand Masters constitute a major source of information about everyday life in Malta at the time of the knights. Seventeen large volumes of them have been preserved,1 ranging from the year 1603 to the end of the Order's rule. Rarely do they deal with matters of great historical import, but rather document private matters which have, at most, a social relevance.peer-reviewe

The persona and deaths of Six 16th century Grand Masters of the Order of St. John

In a previous issue of this Journal, I focused on the personal and psychological traits of four sixteenth century Grand Masters of Malta, perhaps the most popular, or, anyway, the better known. I believe it would be equally rewarding to investigate the physical and mental set-up and health of the other six, who may have left a more indistinct impact on the course of Maltese history, but are nonetheless net contributors to the formation of our nationhood.peer-reviewe

Medical Digressions in a Maltese novel

A rather mysterious and atypical manuscript preserved in the National Library under wraps of massive oblivion, eventually saw the light in 1929. 1 It recounts at considerable length and substantial detail the desolate life of Gabriello Pulis and his misadventures in Malta and through the Mediterranean. Pulis, an irresistible magnet for misfortune and calamity, strove hard to prove that, for some elected ones, if anything could go wrong, it would.peer-reviewe

Reforms in the Holy Infirmary, 1680

The Holy Infirmary, at least in theory, bore witness to the very raison d'etre of the Order of St John ­ the care of the infirm. If the knights came to be known as the Hospitallers, it is because the care of the sick became their historical mission through the centuries, a mission they never abandoned.peer-reviewe

The decline and fall of the Sacra Infermeria

Visitors to Malta who recorded their experiences of the island during the rule by the Order (1530 – 1798) may not have agreed about everything. But on one view they appear unanimous: the outstanding excellence of the main hospital of the knights of St John. Very likely, the most important and advanced hospital in Europe. What distinguished the Order of Malta from other chivalric institutions existing in Europe was its hospitaller character and mission. By the fourteenth century the other knightly Orders had mostly turned into vanity institutions that responded to a purely military vocation: to provide aristocratic militias to defend the Christian faith from the might of the Infidels. The Templars, the Teutonic Order, that of Calatrava, and, later, the Orders of the Golden Fleece, of St Stephen, of the Holy Spirit and several others fell in these categories. The knights of St John, on the other hand, added a unique, rming dimension to their mission: the care of the sick and the infirm.peer-reviewe

Just satisfaction under the convention is there a southern dimension?

When the European Court of Human Rights finds a violation of any protected right, the Convention relies on 'just satisfaction' to re-establish the equilibrium disturbed by the national authorities through the agency of that violation. The Court, mindful of its supranational character and desirous to intrude as minimally as possible in the sphere of national sovereignty, has deliberately imposed on itself a self-discipline that is mostly manifest in how far it will go in ordering the offending state to redress the wrong inflicted From its early days the Court determined never to order violating states any acts of specific performance, but to limit itself to a declaratory judgement that the Convention has been violated, followed occasionally, but not always, by an order to the state to pay a sum of money to the victim by way of compensation. The Court does not declare laws or administrative acts which it finds in breach of the Convention to be null, nor does it enjoin a restitutio in integrum, even in cases where this would be factually possible. In the final analysis, the applicant can at best, expect a certificate of having been a victim of a human rights abuse, and a payment of a sum of money to cover real damages, moral damages and reimbursement of costs.peer-reviewe

The Manoscritti originali del ceb. dottor G. Fran. Buonamico Maltese

Among his other holdings, Vincenzo Bonello (1891-1969) treasured a small collection of Melitensia manuscripts. My father valued anything that threw light on Malta’s past or enriched the understanding of its heritage, and so his little hoard of manuscripts comes as no surprise. They seem to originate from diverse sources, but I have no specific information of their individual provenance. Among them is the bound collection of a number of original Buonamico manuscripts which have inspired this issue of the Journal of Maltese Studies.peer-reviewe

CD38 and ZAP-70 are functionally linked and mark CLL cells with high migratory potential

AbstractOur interest in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) derives primarily from the exploitation of human diseases as strategic models for defining the in vivo biological roles of CD38. Using this model, we showed that CD38 triggers robust proliferation/survival signals modulated through the interactions with the CD31 ligand expressed by nurselike cells and by the stromal/endothelial components. By analyzing a cohort of 56 patients with clinically and molecularly characterized CLL, we show that (1) patients with CD38+/ZAP-70+ are characterized by enhanced migration toward Stromal derived factor-1α (SDF-1α)/CXCL12; (2) CD38 ligation leads to tyrosine phosphorylation of ZAP-70, showing that these markers are functionally linked; (3) ZAP-70 represents a limiting factor for the CD38 pathway in the CLL context, as shown by studying CD38-mediated signal transduction in 26 molecularly characterized patients; and (4) the CLL subgroup of patients defined on the basis of migratory potential is marked by a specific genetic signature, with a significant number of differentially expressed genes being involved in cell-cell interactions and movement. Altogether, the results of this work provide biological evidence for why the combined analysis of CD38 and ZAP-70 expression as determined in several clinical trials results in more dependable identification of patients with CLL who have aggressive disease