Antonio Tagarelli

Casimir Funk: His Discovery of the Vitamins and Their Deficiency Disorders

The history of the discovery of vitamins is the history of their deficiency disorders. Their discoverer was Casimir Funk, who is considered the ‘father of vitamin therapy’. In his experimental research, Funk studied the interrelationships in the human body of those elements that Eijkman had demonstrated in animals, particularly in birds. In his experimental research, Funk identified the dietetic factors whose lack caused the ‘deficiency disorders’, as he called human beri-beri, scurvy, rickets and pellagra. In 1911, he designated these factors ‘vitamins’ (‘vita’ = life, and ‘amine’ = a nitrogenous substance essential for life); this name was accepted by the scientific community in 1912.

Treating epilepsy in Italy between XIX and XX century

Epilepsy is a neurological disorder which has been recognized since antiquity. This paper evaluates the prophylactic and therapeutic remedies used by folk medicine to cure epilepsy in Italy. The data has been collected by reviewing written sources of physicians, ethnographers, folklorists between the late nineteenth and mid twentieth century. This approach leads to unearthing of 78 heterogeneous healing methods that have been divided into 16 (20%) magical, 20 (26%) religious and 42 (54%) natural remedies. The latter has been subdivided into 18 (43%) animal remedies, 17 (40%) plant remedies and 7 (17%) other remedies. Religious and magical remedies were used with the conviction that they would be able to provide recovery from epilepsy and to ward off evil spirits which had taken possession of the sick. Interestingly, the herbal remedies highlighted 12 (70%) plants that play or might play an important role with respect to the mechanisms that generate the epileptic seizures. This leads us to reconsider the historical significance of folk medicine, too often it is underestimated owing to its use of ineffective remedies, born of incompetence and superstition.

Identification of glucose 6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency in a population with a high frequency of thalassemia

High frequencies of both thalassemia trait (5.2%) and glucose 6‐phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiency for only males (1.3%) have been observed in the Calabrian population. The G6PD activity measurement was carried out on 1239 samples of whole blood from Calabrian subjects of both sexes (age range 10–55) by a differential pH‐metry technique which was quite suitable to determine the G6PD deficiency in mass screenings. The analyzed subjects showed: only the thalassemia trait; or only the G6PD deficiency; or only the total iron serum deficiency; or G6PD deficiency associated with the thalassemia trait or with the total iron serum deficiency. The G6PD heterozygous subjects have an enzymatic activity which is masked by both the thalassemia trait and the total iron serum deficiency. In a population showing high frequencies of both thalassemia trait and G6PD deficiency, the comparison of G6PD activity of heterozygous subjects also affected with the thalassemia trait is more reliable if referred to the enzymatic activity of the carriers of the latter inherited anomaly rather than to G6PD activity of normal subjects.

Karl Landsteiner: a hundred years later.

A hundred years after the publication of his first work on the human blood groups, we celebrate Karl Landsteiner (Fig. 1), recognizing his role as father of the science of blood transfusion (1, 2), and one of the fathers of the population genetics (3), the tissue transplantation (4), and immunology (5). He was a man who, without funds or assistance, developed a deep understanding of the individual differences in human blood. Landsteiner was so averse to praise, so honest and so good, that he never achieved complete happiness in his personal life, finding his greatest satisfaction in his solitary scientific work. Indeed, he was so sad and melancholy that Hans Zinsser, a famous colleague in immunology who taught at the Harvard Medical School, told him repeatedly: “Karl, you are always crabby, always complaining.” Karl Landsteiner was born on 14 June 1868, son of the enterprising reporter Leopold Landsteiner, from whom he inherited great self-control, a notable fondness for logical thought, and a strong tenacity. Karl Landsteiner, however, maintained that his father’s seriousness and methodical habits were irritating. However, Landsteiner inherited from his mother, Fanny Hess, great modesty and reserve, attributes that ought to distinguish all great and famous men. Although it is usually recorded that Karl Landsteiner was born in the city of Vienna, he was actually born in the Jewish quarter, referred to as Baden bei Wien. His Jewish origin caused many difficulties for him during his scientific career. He was a precocious and model student. After completing primary school and the first 4 years of secondary school, in 1880 he attended the Staatsgymnasium in Linz as an “honours student”. During these studies he developed a great interest in the natural sciences and mathematics. Landsteiner entered the University of Vienna in 1885 and studied under the most famous scientists of the day: Langer, with whom he studied anatomy; Claus, who specialized in zoology; and Schenk, from whom he learned histology. He also studied hematological chemistry and the metabolism of the blood with Mauthner and Ernst von Fleishl. However, organic chemistry remained his first love, and his experimental work was conducted in the footsteps of Professor Ernst Ludwig. All his publications in this field anticipated his subsequent serological studies. On February 21, 1891, Landsteiner took a degree in medicine. He then began work in the laboratory of the medical clinic directed by Otto Kahler, who discovered and described the Kahler syndrome, today called “multiple myeloma.” From 1891 to 1893 Landsteiner completed his apprenticeship under two experts in the field of organic chemistry. First, in Würzberg, he studied under Emil Hermann Fischer (6), who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1902 for his works about the organic synthetic approaches to glucose, oligopeptides, and caffeine. Later, in Munich, Landsteiner worked with Eugen von Bamberger in the laboratory of the Academy of Sciences and published jointly with him a treatise on the reaction of diazobenzol to calium permanganate. It was during this period that Karl 1 Address correspondence to: Antonio Tagarelli, Istituto di Medicina Sperimentale e Biotecnologie-CNR, Contrada Burga 87050 Mangone (CS), Italy.

Color vision impairment in Parkinson's disease.

Acquired disturbances of color vision are a highly varied group of defects with frequent departures from established patterns. They can progress from normal trichromatism to anomalous trichromatism on to a dichromatic stage and to monochromatism where most color vision is lost, or they may be relatively stable [1]. A significant “modern effort” to present such conditions was published for first time in 1972 [2], attention was drawn in a significant account given 15 years later by Jaeger and Krastel emphasizing pharmaco-therapeutical effects [3]. Normally, dopaminergic neurons act in the outer and inner retina at multiple levels, producing alterations to the flow of visual information in a complex fashion. Dopamine is a chemical messenger for light adaptation, promoting the flow of information through cone circuits while diminishing that through rod circuits [4]. Color vision relies on the cone photoreceptor population and is therefore largely confined to the central retina. Because there is a segregation of color-specific information at the retinal into blue-yellow and red-green pathways, it is possible to use color discrimination tasks to assess cone and retinal ganglion cell subpopulations [4]. It has been reported that color vision is impaired in Parkinson’s disease (PD) [5] and some works have suggested that these disturbances to color vision affect predominantly the short-wave cone pathway [6]. Birch suggested that the acquired type three (tritan) defect at the retinal level as an early diagnostic sign of Parkinson’s ∗Correspondence to: Anna Piro, Neuroimaging Research Unit, IBFM-CNR, Germaneto, Catanzaro, Italy. Tel.: +393402529194; Fax: +39 0 9613695919; E-mail: anna.piro@cnr.it. disease [7]. We examined 49 PD Calabrian all male patients (age range, 50–85 years, mean age, 67 years) to avoid that genetic appearance of the “lionization” which can be present in the heterozygous females for color vision deficiency who mimic the vision of the normal females [8]. All patients underwent the L-DOPA doses subdivided into two different groups: 125–300 mg/day, low daily dose; 400–1000 mg/day, high daily dose. 25 age and sex matched controls showing a normal color vision, in comparison with the patients (chi square = 25.3, df = 1, p< 0.0005) were enrolled in comparison with 25/49 PD patients showing a defect of bleu/yellow axis. Controls did not show any PD signs, or other acquired ophthalmological disease. After informed consent, all patients, and controls had an examination by an ophthalmologist in order to rule a diabetic retinopathy, or a cataract, or an optic neuritis, or a senile maculopathy, or ocular fundus’ anomalies that could influence the color vision analysis. All PD patients who made more than 5 mistakes during their reading from the first 17 Ishihara plates were diagnosed as being color-blind, and this diagnosis was confirmed by their reading from the next four (numbers 18–21) Ishihara plates. The last four Ishihara plates (numbers 22–25) were utilized to define the type of color-blindness (the red or green colorbindness) and the grade of color-blindness: protanopy, the absence of red vision or protanomaly, the small deficiency of red color vision, and deuteranopy, the absence of green color vision or deuteranomaly, the small deficiency of green color vision [9]. PD colorblind patients were excluded from the analysis. So,

Paul Ehrlich: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1908

We wish to commemorate Paul Ehrlich on the centennial of his being awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1908. His studies are now considered as milestones in immunology: the morphology of leukocytes; his side-chain theory where he defined the cellular receptor for first time; and his clarification of the difference between serum therapy and chemotherapy. Ehrlich also invented the first chemotherapeutic drug: compound 606, or Salvarsan. We have used some original documents from the Royal Society of London, where Ehrlich was a fellow, and from Leipzig University, where he took a degree in medicine.

Genetic characterization of the historical Albanian ethnic minority of Calabria (Southern Italy)

Three historical ethnic minorities are present in Calabria: Albanians, Greeks, and Occitans. The Albanian ethnic minority is the more populous, having settled in Calabria between the 15th and 17th centuries, and these populations are now located in the provinces of Cosenza and Catanzaro. In the present study the Albanian population structure is analyzed based on the allele frequencies of six classic genetic markers: ACP, GC, PGM1, AK, ADA, and 6PGD. The results show a significant heterogeneity between the Albanian population in Calabria and the population in Molise. Therefore the cultural and reproductive isolation of the Albanian ethnic minority of Calabria is related to a great genetic peculiarity. Moreover, the frequencies of some alleles, particularly those of the PGM*1W31 variant, and the analysis of the R matrix still show the actual peculiar genetic structure of the Albanians of Calabria, although the genetic flow is evident in the decrease of endogamy and in the increase in the degree of mixing.

The Psychological and Physical Pain in the Neurological Syphilis by SomeLiterature between XIX and XX Century

An even if brief representation of a neurologic syphilis within the Literature between XIX century and the half of XX, is relatively exhaustive. Through the chosen works, and above all through the words of its Authors affected by the disease, we can appreciate the social trouble represented by syphilis during those years; moreover, we cannot omit its clinic complexity in this medical phase. So, we can show a neurological syphilis that arises to some new medical and scientific debates allowing the born of Social Disease’s although showing psychological soaked troubles while everyone mirrors in Contemporary Age.

On the illness of Politian (Agnolo Ambrogini, 1454–1494): Syphilis at its identification in Europe

The authors investigated the life, the works and the illness of the humanist and poet Agnolo Ambrogini, better known as Politian, and the cause of his death, shedding evidence on the ambiguous meaning of the term scabies that is included in the titles of two works ascribed to Politian, namely ‘Sylva in scabiem’ and ‘De scabie’. These two works tell us the illness that will kill Politian who describes them in detail as a new illness that does appear in other important works dated between the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th. This new illness will be called ‘syphilis’. Syphilis was virulent in Europe soon after it appeared and it killed Politian within one year. He seems to have been the first famous European who was not a physician who described his own syphilis. Others include the poet Niccolò Campani (1478–1523), the writer and humanist Ulrich Von Hutten (1488–1523), the sculptor and writer Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571) and Joseph Grunpeck (1473–1532), and secretary to Emperor Maximilian I (1459–1519). The origins of this serious condition have been ascribed to the crew who accompanied Christopher Columbus (1451–1506).

Syphilis or Jealousy? Analysis of a figure in Bronzino's painting ‘Allegory of Venus and Cupid’ (National Gallery, London)

In Bronzinos ‘Allegory of Venus and Cupid’, the figure often identified as Jealousy in the left halfway down corner is looking down showing shock and horror. The darkened skin of the figure below suggests syphilitic rupia: the hands are pressed on …