•  132
    Origins and History of Darwinian Medicine
    Humana Mente 3 (9): 13-38. 2009.
    Contemporary Darwinian medicine is a still-expanding new discipline whose principal aim is to arrive at an evolutionary understanding of aspects of the body that leave it vulnerable to disease. Historically, there was a precedent; between 1880 and 1940 several scientists tried to develop a general evolutionary theory of disease as arising from deleterious traits that escape elimination by natural selection. In contrast, contemporary Darwinian medicine uses evolutionary theory to consider all the…Read more
  •  64
    Iconography and Wax Models in Italian Early Smallpox Vaccination
    with Alberto Zanatta and Maurizio Rippa Bonati
    Medicine Studies 2 (4): 213-227. 2011.
    Luigi Sacco (1769–1863) was the main protagonist of early vaccination campaign in Italy. He found a native source of vaccine lymph: with that, he personally vaccinated more than 500,000 people and furnished all Italy and some Middle East countries too. Starting from the pictures of his books, Sacco proposed to create wax models of real and spurious smallpox pustules in human, cow, sheep and horse; just to permit, not only to doctors, but also to all other health operators, the identification of …Read more
  •  12
    Origins and history of Darwinian medicine
    Humana. Mente 9 13-38. 2009.