The aging male in the Old Testament.

According to the first books of the Old Testament--namely the Pentateuch--the antediluvian and post-diluvian patriarchs lived for hundreds of years having sons and daughters until the end of their exceptionally long lives. These unbelievable statements can be explained only if the particular character of the biblical chronologies is considered. The continence of David and the behavior of Solomon and of some of the 'judges of the people' pose very interesting historical, cultural and gerontological problems.

[An outline of odontoiatry and odontology in the ancient world]. / Pagine di odontoiatria e di odontologia nel mondo antico.

Dentistry was surely practiced in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Etruria, Greece and Rome, but odontology arose only with the dawn of Greek science. One may find the first references to a rational odontology only in the fragments of the Pre-socratic philosophers and in the Corpus Hippocraticum. Aristotle was the first to treat odontology under a comparative anatomo-physiological point of view. Celsus and Scribonius Largus got their matter from Hippocrates, Aristotle, the Hellenistic anatomists as well as from folk-traditions, but payed attention rather to dentistry than to odontology. Finally Galen gathered all the knowledge about odontology and dentistry from Hippocrates up to the Hellenistic anatomists and organized all the matter in his monumental teleologic and theological system, that was inherited by both the so called iatrosophists and the Byzantine physicians.

The Aristotelian kidney.

Aristotle incorrectly observed the absence of the kidney in fish and birds and deduced that it was not essential for the existence of a living organism. This underlies his observations on structure and function of the kidney. From examination of rhesus monkeys he generalized that the right kidney is higher than the left. Aristotle did not consider that the renal pelvis is divided by a filter membrane into 2 chambers, and wrote that no blood reaches the renal pelvis. The theory of the 'filter kidney' cannot thus be attributed to Aristotle. The function of the kidney was described as being to separate the surplus liquid from the blood inside the renal meat (not in the renal pelvis) and to transform this liquid into what Aristotle called residuum, i.e. the urine. Aristotle also considered that the kidneys acted to anchor the blood vessels to the body. He only briefly considered renal pathology.

The Medical School at Ravenna.

The existence of the Ravenna School of Medicine can be deduced from a codex in the Ambrosian Library of Milan, which contains Latin translations of 3 Hippocratic works and commentaries on 4 works by Galen. Although it was written in the 9th century, the codex appears to be a copy of an earlier work, probably 7th century. The Ambrosian commentaries follow other commentators on Aristotle, rather than the original Aristotelian works, and contain a number of misinterpretations. Nevertheless, the commentaries make it clear that the earliest literature in Salerno had its roots in the studies of classical medicine at the Ravenna School of Medicine, where the teaching was essentially Galenic in structure.

[Manuscript G. 108 inf. in the Ambrosiana library in Milan]. / Le manuscrit G. 108 inf. de la Bibliothèque Ambrosiana de Milan.

The manuscript G.180 inf. preserved in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana of Milan contains the Latin translations of three Hippocratic treatises (Prògnosticon, De aere, De septimanis) that were studied and published between the end of the XIXth and the beginning of the XXth century. But the second part of the manuscript is far more interesting and important. It contains four commentaries to Galen's four treatises: De sectis ad introducendos, Ars medica, De pulsibus ad tirones, Ad Glauconem de medendi methodo. The commentaries were composed in Ravenna between the 6th and the 7th century by "Agnellus iatrosophista" and were written by the physician Simplicius, surely one of Agnellus' pupils. But they aren't an original works by Agnellus: they are translations and combinations of original Greek commentaries compilated by Alexandrian scholars perhaps about the 6th century with Ammonius' and Olympiodorus' teaching method. At any rate, these commentaries testify the occurrence in Ravenna of a most active School of Medicine at the beginning of the Middle Ages. This school was a linear descendant of the School of Alexandria and transmitted classic medical culture first to the Beneventan medicine, and then, through the Beneventan medicine, to the early Schola Salenitana.