Summary The intrusion of infectious diseases in everyday life forces humans to reassess their attitudes. Indeed, pandemics are able catalyze rapid transitions in scientific knowledge, politics, social behaviors, culture and arts. The current Coronavirus diesease-19 (COVID-19) outbreak has driven an unprecedented interest toward the influenza pandemic of 1918. The issue is whether history can shed light on the best preventive response and future scenarios. The aim of this review is to highlight the parallelism between the two pandemics. Starting from epidemiology and clinical features, but further focusing on social and cultural issues, it is possible to unreveal great similarities. Their outbreak pattern lead to hypothesize a similar duration and death burden in absence of effective vaccines or innovative treatments for COVID-19. Thus, then as now, preventive medicine represents the first and most effective tool to contain the course of the pandemic; being treatments available only supportive. At the same time,both pandemics shared the same pattern of narration (e.g. scapegoating) and the same impact on minorities in high-income countries. Furthermore, visual art responded to pandemic issues in 2020 in the form of Graffiti art, while similar role was ruled by Expressionism movement during the Spanish flu. Photography also was capable to document both catastrophic scenarios. Thus, it is possible to find a lot of clinical and social similarities between the two pandemics. Nevertheless, if the Spanish flu was not unforseen, COVID-19 spillover was partially predictable and its global impact will hopefully not be overshadowed by a major crisis such as World War I.

Academic activity is intrinsically composed of two aspects: teaching and research. Since the 20th century, the aphorism “publish or perish” has overwhelmingly established itself in the academic field. Research activity has absorbed more attention from the professors who have neglected teaching activity. In anatomical sciences, research has focused mainly on ultrastructural anatomy and biochemical aspects, far removed from the topics addressed to medical students. Will today’s anatomists be rewarded by their choice? To generate a forecast, we should entrust what history has already taught us. For this analysis, an example was taken, concerning the fate that history reserved for the anatomy teachers of the University of Bologna in the second half of the 16th century. Thanks to Vesalius (1514–1564), experimentation on the human body replaced the old dogmatic knowledge, and didactic innovation was one with research. Some figures were highly praised despite their poor scientific production. The present article focuses on the figure of Flaminio Rota, who was highly esteemed by his colleagues in spite of no significant scientific activity. Reasons for this paradox are examined. Then, history also whispers to us: publish, but without perishing in the oblivion of students.

No abstract

St. Catherine of Siena suffered from an extreme form of holy fasting, a condition classified as anorexia mirabilis (also known as inedia prodigiosa). Historical and medical scholarships alike have drawn a comparison between this primaeval type of anorexia with a relatively common form of eating disorder among young women in the modern world, anorexia nervosa. St. Catherine's condition was characterised by a disgust for sweet taste, a condition also described in anorexia nervosa, and characterised by specific neurophysiological changes in the brain. St. Catherine's case may be considered one of the oldest veritable descriptions of altered gustation (dysgeusia). Moreover, a more compelling neurophysiological similarity between anorexia mirabilis and anorexia nervosa may be proposed.

No abstract