UN EPISODIO DI COLERA A SAMPTERDARENA (1856)

Abstract

In the incredible setting of a church in Sampierdarena, already used on previous occasions as a quarantine hospital for those suffering from plague, smallpox and similar illnesses, a young woman was examined by dr. P. P. Parodi and diagnosed as having "eclampsia with albuminuria following cholera morbus". Having survived the remedies typically administred at the time, the first one unfortunately being bleeding, in her seventh month of pregnancy she ceased to feel any foetal movement, raising for the onlookers a real and serious moral question concerning the survival ofthe unborn child. Exhorted by them to carry out a ceaserian birth, the doctor tried to examine the subject in all its various aspects: medical, legal, moral and religious. Finally, in view of the risk it represented to the mother's survival, he decided not to go ahead with the operation unless he had the support of fellow doctors. Surprised by the contemplation he had given the matter, the onlookers had a complete change of mind and at the same time, quite unexpectedly, the young woman started to feel the foetus moving inside her againl After having slowly regained her strength, Marina C. finally left the church-hospital as a mother. There follow some considerations by the author concerning the conduct of the doctor in question, making use above all of a text by P. Arata who, during the cholera epidemic, argued in favour of premature childbirth.