The Department of History of Experimental Medicine and Pathology of
the University of Rome has recently arranged a series of research seminars
in History of Medicine. It has been a new opportunity to deal with the
complex question of quality of life in ancient populations, of incidence
of diseases comparing with different methods and branches of studies apparently
very distant between them as Paleopathology, Urbanistic, History and Philosophy.
It seems more and more evident the necessity to involve a whole of matters
both to understand in wich way the disease was faced and "lived"
by the ancient populations and to understand the most general aspects of
social life of individuals: presence or absence of specific pathologies,
their impact on expectation of life, on its quality, on the age of death
of individuals and groups of people. Up to some years ago these fundamental
aspects were not fully considered by medieval societies researches even
though historians and archeologists did not miss big aggregative studies
on contagions or epidemics that were thought, especially within the collective
imaginary , as a distinguishing mark of Medieval Europe compared with other
ages. Nevertheless, anthropological data, advised like precious archeological
fonts, could allow us to face new aspects of medieval life.
Paleopathological studies offer a lot of meaningful informations: if biologists
turn their sudies toward the capability to gain patterns of presence and
diffusion of a illness, and the useful elements to fight them, maybe the
contribute of these analysis represents for historians and archaeologists
one of the only element able to deal with some questions still unsolved.
Relationships among paleopathologists and researchers on medieval society
have been recently strongly accelerated: if is not still possible speak
of a continous collaboration and popularization, a frequent interlacement
among scholars of different fields is estabilished : certainly it will
consent to medieval society studies an improvement. One of the central
themes faced in the seminars held between May 17 and June 7 1996, has been
the occurrence and frequency of the tumor in the past. Prof.Gino Fornaciari,
of Pisa University, one of the greater scholars of Paleopathology in the
world, has fully explaned it. On account of this subject, very important
to reach knowledge about conditions of life in the past, we have two different
positions. USA scholars support the tumor was present only in very few
cases; Czech researchers instead retain that tumor had a little smaller
diffusion comparing with today. Unfortunately tumors have a very large
diffusion in contemporary societies (20 % of death's cause). At least a
quarter of this pathologies has an effect on the skeleton, and we could
find it in ancient burials. But in the ancient necropolis we never found
such percentage, not even, at least, the exspected 5 %: impact of tumors
achieves 1% scarcely. Appearently tumor was not a large cause of death
in the past: What is the reason why ? There are two answers to this question
: 1) generally cancer strikes the aged men : if we believe, following a
general opinion, that ancient people was less long-lived than us, that
is explaned one reason. 2) A fewer presence of chemical carcinogens in
the past comparing with today. Moreover, contemporary society, because
of easy intercontinental travelling, the worldwide circulation of objects
and food, is steadly in contact with infectious illness, from which the
antigenic stimulus, jointly responsible of the birth of some kinds of tumor.
It surely would happen more rarely to ancient populations. Moreover Prof.
Fornaciari has illustrated a series of studies realized on medieval mummies
found in the tombs of Aragonese court in Naples: in two cases he has found
the cause of death was a tumor. Currently paleopathological studies turn
toward the study of mummified samples that consent, together with the modern
analysis of molecular biology, to obtain many informations as regards the
diffused diseases in the past centuries. Not to understimate are the interrogatives
that spring from the study of tumors in ancient age:1) is it real that
in antiquity the "middle age" (or better, the individual "hope
of life") was so low? 2) is it possible identify a difference among
the different epoches? 3) Were some kinds of disease experienced at the
same level of vulnerability of contemporary societies? 4) In which way
did medicine, society and environment fight these sicknesses? Researching
about cancer presence among ancient people is just one of the various possibilities
that paleopathology allows to us. The field of application of this discipline
is pretty wide, particularly when conspicuous groups of individuals are
considered. It is possible to study the regime feed, the scarceness, the
diffusion of "environmental" illnesses (like malaria) or collective
poisoning episodes like lead poisoning, that strucked late-ancient elevated
classes, popular as “saturnism”. If we help these studies with anthropological
ones (statures, ethnic analysis, diagnosis of death and sexual dimorphism),
informations involving archeological and historical fields extend widely.
Firmed ideas and theories could be discuss, so to open new ranges to the
scientific search. As soon as anthropological analyses are part of the
archeological excavations, it is necessary to claim a lack of communication
between researchers of different sectors; they often have different objectives
and methods so when they have to collaborate they often don’t understand
each others as much as incomprehensible are often the results or, anyway,
contaminated by ancient and solid prejudices. Medieval society is particularly
helpless from this point of sight: the rarity of written sources about
daily life, and the difficulty of archeological excavations necessary to
understand life of medieval men in a lot of cases, could be overcome with
the help of paleopathology and anthropology, also with the aim of cancel
old biases and opinions only relied on historical studies, that, cause
their synthetical structure, could not explane the manifold sides of a
fragmental society but at the same time culturally well linked as Medieval
Europe was.The seminar of History of the medicine have demonstrated, specially
thanks to Prof. Fornaciari, that is possible obtain results of sure interest
and promising development in this direction.
Fabio Giovannini