Tag: Italy
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Beccalossi C. Sexology, sexual development, and hormone treatments in Southern Europe and Latin America, c.1920-40. Hist Human Sci. 2023 Dec;36(5):94-121. doi: 10.1177/09526951231213028. Epub 2023 Dec 6. PMID: 38077463; PMCID: PMC10700059.
AbstractDisplacing the physiological model that had held sway in 19th-century medical thinking, early 20th-century medical scientists working on hormones promoted a new understanding of the body, psychological reactions, and the sexual instinct, arguing that each were fundamentally malleable. Hormones came to be understood as the chemical messengers that regulated an individual’s growth and sexual development,…
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Beccalossi C. Italian sexology, Nicola Pende’s biotypology and hormone treatments in the 1920s. Hist Med Sante. 2017 Winter;12:73-97. doi: 10.4000/hms.1173. Epub 2018 May 28. PMID: 31501760; PMCID: PMC6733708.
AbstractThis article analyses a selection of Nicola Pende’s studies from the 1920s on ‘endocrinological abnormalities’ associated with impotence, a lack of virility in men, a lack of femininity in women, and homosexuality. By analysing endocrinological sexual theories and treatments, it aims to illustrate the ways in which hormone research pioneered an innovative approach to the…
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BECCALOSSI C. Optimizing and normalizing the population through hormone therapies in Italian science, c.1926–1950. The British Journal for the History of Science. 2020;53(1):67-88. doi:10.1017/S0007087419000906
Abstract This essay explores how hormone treatments were used to optimize and normalize individuals under Italian Fascism. It does so by taking the activities of the Biotypological Orthogenetic Institute − an Italian eugenics and endocrinological centre founded by Nicola Pende in 1926 − as the prime example of a version of eugenics, biotypology, which was…
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Virgil was a sorcerer?
Publius Vergilius Maro (traditional dates 15 October 70 – 21 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: the Eclogues (or Bucolics), the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid. A number of minor poems, collected in the Appendix Vergiliana, were attributed to him in ancient times, but modern scholars consider his…
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Herculaneum was an ancient Roman town buried under volcanic ash and pumice in the Eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.
Herculaneum (Neapolitan and Italian: Ercolano) was an ancient Roman town, located in the modern-day comune of Ercolano, Campania, Italy. Herculaneum was buried under volcanic ash and pumice in the Eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Like the nearby city of Pompeii, Herculaneum is famous as one of the few ancient cities to be preserved nearly intact, as the ash that blanketed the town protected it against…
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The Grotta di Cocceio is an ancient Roman tunnel connecting Lake Avernus with Cumae, dated 38-36 BC
The Grotta di Cocceio (Cocceius’ Tunnel) is an ancient Roman tunnel nearly a kilometre in length connecting Lake Avernus with Cumae and dating from 38-36 BC. It was burrowed through the tuff stone of Monte Grillo by the architect Lucius Cocceius Auctus at the command of Agrippa who was in the process of converting the Lake into a military port, the Portus Julius. The tunnel was wide enough to…
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The Bourbon Tunnel
The Bourbon Tunnel, Tunnel Borbonico or Bourbon Gallery (Italian: Galleria Borbonica) is an ancient underground passage, constructed for military purposes to connect the Royal Palace to military barracks in Naples, Italy. The monarchy in the era of King Ferdinand II of Bourbon was fearful of the revolution-prone populace of Naples. Errico Alvino was commissioned to construct a military passage for troops connecting the Royal Palace of Naples to Via…
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Crypta Neapolitana, Virgil’s Tomb and more
The Crypta Neapolitana (Latin for “Neapolitan crypt”) is an ancient Roman road tunnel near Naples, Italy. It was built in 37 BC and is over 700 metres long. The tunnel connected Naples with the so-called Phlegrean Fields and the town of Pozzuoli along the road known as the via Domiziana. Via Domiziana is the modern name for the Via Domitiana in the Campania region of Italy, a major Roman road built in 95 AD under (and…
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Catacombs of Saint Gaudiosus
Are you ready for a journey into the macabre underbelly of Naples? Welcome to the Catacombs of San Gaudioso, where the dead don’t just rest – they put on a show! Nestled beneath the bustling Rione Sanità district, these 4th-century catacombs are a veritable playground for the morbidly curious. Here’s what awaits you in this…
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Colomba pasquale, Italian Easter bread
Colomba pasquale [koˈlomba paˈskwaːle] or colomba di Pasqua [koˈlomba di ˈpaskwa] (“Easter Dove” in English) is an Italian traditional Easter bread, the counterpart of the two well-known Italian Christmas desserts, panettone and pandoro. The dough for the colomba is made in a similar manner to panettone, with flour, eggs, sugar, natural yeast and butter; unlike panettone, it usually contains candied peel and no raisins. The dough is then fashioned into a dove shape (colomba in Italian) and finally…
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San Bernardino alle Ossa, Milan
San Bernardino alle Ossa is a church in Milan, northern Italy, best known for its ossuary, a small side chapel decorated with numerous human skulls and bones. In 1210, when an adjacent cemetery ran out of space, a room was built to hold bones. A church was attached in 1269. Renovated in 1679, it was destroyed by a…
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The Capuchin Crypt, Rome
The Capuchin Crypt is a small space comprising several tiny chapels located beneath the church of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini on the Via Veneto near Piazza Barberini in Rome, Italy. It contains the skeletal remains of 3,700 bodies believed to be Capuchin friars buried by their order. The Catholic order insists that the display is not meant to be macabre, but a silent reminder of the swift passage of…
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The Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo
The Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo (also Catacombe dei Cappuccini or Catacombs of the Capuchins) are burial catacombs in Palermo, Sicily, southern Italy. Today they provide a somewhat macabre tourist attraction as well as an extraordinary historical record. Historical background Palermo’s Capuchin monastery outgrew its original cemetery in the 16th century and monks began to excavate crypts below it. In 1599 they mummified one of their number, the recently-deceased brother Silvestro of Gubbio, and placed him…
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Catacombs of San Gennaro in Naples, Italy
The Catacombs of San Gennaro are underground paleo-Christian burial and worship sites in Naples, Italy, carved out of tuff, a porous stone. They are situated in the northern part of the city, on the slope leading up to Capodimonte [it], consisting of two levels, San Gennaro Superiore, and San Gennaro Inferiore. The catacombs lie under the Rione Sanità neighborhood of Naples, sometimes called the “Valley of the Dead”. The…
