RE: VMs: Strange disorders

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

At 21:38 17/06/2003 -0500, GC wrote:
> What I don't get though is the constant reference by the medical profession
> to the lack of anesthesia in surgery and routine medicine during these
> times.  There is a wealth of literary comment on opiates and other plants
> that are known to possess anesthetic qualities.  These were either taken
> internally before procedures or in many cases applied topically to wounds
> before suturing, etc.  I'm no medical professional, but it does seem to me
> that these guys did their best to alleviate pain.  Not very good by modern
> standards, but at least they tried.

Patrizia Catellani's page on Caterina Sforza's Experimenti (roughly 
1490-1500) covers this:
        http://chifar.unipv.it/museo/Catellani/catSforza/Ric_CatSf.htm

Here's my rough-and-ready translation of the last three paragraphs:-

        Perhaps the prescription in Caterina Sforza's book that
        deserves the greatest attention is the one entitled:-

                "A far dormire una persona per tal modo che porrai operare
                in chirurgia quel che vorrai e non ti sentirà et est 
probatumn.

                ["To make a person sleep in such a way to perform
                a surgical operation, while feeling no pain: and
                this has been proven" (probatum est)]

        The contents listed by Caterina towards the end of the 15th Century
        are largely similar to another anaesthetic (comprising opium, sour
        mulberry [perhaps blackberry?] juice, mandrake leaves, ivy, hemlock
        and other plants), found both in a 9th Century manuscript held
        in Montecassino Monastery, and also in a book of surgery dated to
        Bologna in 1265.

Because I was interested in seeing whether the VMS might have been part of 
some anaesthetic literature tradition, I asked Patrizia for the MS 
references on those two latter sources, which she later confirmed as having 
come from an article written by a historical journalist called Venerio 
Montevecchi, who works in Imola (Caterina Sforza's home town).

However, despite Patrizia calling him a few times, he proved to be fairly 
uninterested in being tracked down by her, which I think is a bit of a 
shame. :-(

As a side note, in this Italian blog (please excuse my rough translation)...
        http://robe.splinder.it/1041375600
...Venerio Montevecchi is mentioned as having written (in a local Imolese 
paper) about a historical Romagna tradition of growing hemp for clothes in 
the Middle Ages, but with a particular boom during the 1700s. In fact, in 
1749, Casanova went to Cesena intending the sexual conquest of a land-owner 
friend's 14-year old daughter, but the intense smoke from hemp burning 
nearby left him dazed and confused, with hallucinations and a panic attack. 
However, before Imola's brothels were closed, Ferrarese prostitutes were 
generally believed, on account of the density of hemp fumes in their area, 
to give "unforgettable sexual performances".

Make of that what you will. ;-)

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....

PS: "Probatum est", Heidelberg & Alchemy:-
        http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~english/Stoudt.html 


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