The beginnings on ‘Domenica del Corriere’
Milan , April 21, 2014 – 10:32
” A blooming season that has not (…). Just mention the exodus of all consumptives in Berlin for tuberculin (…) we must all be wary of the findings that emerge daily on newspapers and die in clinics and hospitals serious. ” It’s 1903, this is a song from the “doctor’s advice”, signed Dr. Petrus, which proves two things: that actually some type of “bloom” has no season and that from the outset the medical disclosure arises seriously the problem of miracle cures reported by “newspapers” and the impact of these on the public. In this case, then it was not easy to reject so much that new hope against one of the scourges of the time. In fact, the tuberculin invented by the Robert Koch discovered the bacillus, proved a failure as a vaccine, although it is still used as a test. But apparently Dr. Petrus, born Peter Favari, a well-known doctor in Milan at the time, was one who understood.
is one of the protagonists of a historical essay just published , “The Journal as a cure”, by Simona Ugolini, educator and researcher in Bioethics, dedicated to the birth of the disclosure in a medical journal such as the popular Domenica del Corriere , born on January 8, 1899 as insert gift the Corriere della Sera . The new weekly gave ample space to medicine, with ad hoc or news articles scattered in his “famous headings” as Gleanings and Americanate. And it was no accident: Just in Milan during the 800 were born the first popular science magazines of science, especially at the hands of the physician and anthropologist Paolo Mantegazza. But it was certainly “The Council of the doctor” at the heart of this “mission” of the newspaper, a book appeared for the first time right at the end of the century, in December 1899, remained until the closure of the newspaper, almost a century later, and inherited then from this very newspaper, the Corriere Health . Dr. Petrus, says the author, “spoke to her patients with the simplicity of an old and valued friend of the family … he used a short phrasing, poor and rich examples of engraved,” was marked by optimism but with a rational approach to disease. That still seems a good recipe. The success was immediately great, as evidenced by the amount of letters that came to Dr. Petrus and that led to the creation of an appendix of the book called “Opinions from a distance”, which reported directly to readers. By offering advice – says Petrus – and not ‘care at a distance “, because in case of troubling symptoms” you had to go by your family doctor for a visit. “
It never failed advice hygiene on how to raise children or shave, but also frequent tirades against the charlatans, against those who would listen to stupid advice of relatives. Starting from 1906 it appears the other protagonist of this little epic. The phone book of medicine Sunday is published with a new signature, Dr. Parva, which shall be the owner until the outbreak of the First World War. Even Parva says that you can not “heal at a distance” and that “there are diseases, but sick” to be treated case by case basis by intelligent physicians. However, using a more literary and flowery language, covers topics less “popular” (to take the risk of infections in the theater, dieting) and appears to be almost obsessed with the theme of hygiene, so as to promote a real campaign against flies . Which is amply justified by the health conditions of the early twentieth century Italy, where millions of immigrants fleeing famine and disease. Even if the protagonist for about a decade, Dr. Parva’s identity remains a mystery. According to Simona Ugolini the best hypothesis is that it was a woman, even to the name of female Latin parvus , baby. But it is possible that in 1906, the medicine was given to a woman? We do not know, but certainly we know that in 1929 it was a woman, Amalia Moretti Foggia, to pick up the book, renamed “The word of the doctor,” under the pseudonym of Dr. Amal ambiguous.
In his writings, in fact, the Corriere della Sera Foundation recently dedicated an anthology. Valance was born in 1872, the second woman to graduate from medical school at the University of Padua, was an extraordinary figure popularizer: not only was Dr. Amal until his death in 1947, but soon became the holder of another famous book of Sunday , signed Petronilla, dedicated to cooking recipes and also collaborated with the Corriere dei Piccoli Reading . Wherever bringing its footprint doctor with an unprecedented attention to the health qualities of the food, which also stemmed from his passion for herbal medicine, when he wrote of gastronomy; with the expertise of a pediatrician, when he invented tales for educational Small ; and with the quality of the writer ushering in the stories for reading a true “narrative medicine”. Prejudice, however, as Dr. Amal, well anchored in reality and actuality. Gracefully, but accuracy, teaches how to read the results of a urine test or explains what the acidity of the stomach. Here it is to report, in 1945, the arrival of penicillin and the difficulty to retrieve it, concluding: “As the same for all should be the law, so it should be the same for all the chance to win an infection.”
April 21, 2014 | 10:32
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