734 book reviews

Concetta Pennuto (ed.) Giorgio Baglivi, Della tarantola. Lo studio di un medico nel Salento del xvii secolo. Roma: Carocci, 2015. 190 pp., isbn 978-88-430-7344-3.

Concetta Pennuto, historian of at the “Centre d’études supérieures de la Renaissance” of the University of Tours “François Rabelais”, known for her studies on Girolamo Fracastoro, offers us a new Italian translation of Baglivi’s De anatome, morsu et effectibus tarantulae. This edition, started at the end of 1999 under the supervision of Bernardino Fantini, is now published within the book series “Storia e memorie del Tarantismo” by Carocci, with the support of Andrea Carlino and his research group on the history of tarantism. Fifty years after the death of Ernesto De Martino, whose book Terra del rimorso. Contributo a una storia religiosa del Sud (1961) has marked so strongly the studies on tarantism in Salento, Baglivi’s dissertation, one of the most important classics on this topic, is available again, but in a new and updated form. The choice of the text has been among Pennuto’s main concerns: she decided to limit her focus to the four versions edited by Baglivi himself. There- fore, her translation is mainly based on the version of the text that was included in the first edition of De praxi medica (, 1696), and it is compared with the other three versions: first of all, the entry “Tarantati” in the fourth book of Manget’s Bibliotheca medico-practica (Geneva, 1698), which presents several differences; then, the text included in the second edition of De praxi medica (Lyon, 1699) and the one of the first edition of Opera omnia medico-practica, et anatomica (Lyon, 1704). The collation of these four versions shows a thor- ough revision of the Latin text: Baglivi does not simply change a few words, he also edits long passages and adds new information. For example, in the well-known ch. 13 Baglivi mentions (in Latin, Ragusa), a Croatian city in . However, in the Opera omnia, he revises this passage and he specifies that he was born in Dubrovnik on September 8, 1668, and from Dubrovnik, at an early age, he departed “cum parentibus” to Alezio, a small town near . Obviously, this clarification elicited different interpretations about Baglivi’s biography, depending on how the expression “cum parentibus” is interpreted. For instance, contrary to what was claimed by many scholars in the 18th and 19th centuries (see Fabroni’s Vitae Italorum doctrina excellen- tium, 1779, sub voce, for the two main hypotheses on Baglivi’s moving to ), argued that, according to new archival documents discovered in Dubrovnik, this expression could not be interpreted literally. Indeed, Gior- gio and his brother Giacomo were already orphans before arriving in Apulia, where Pietro Angelo Baglivi, the physician that gave them his name, adopted them.

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This example shows the importance of an accurate synopsis of the differ- ent editions of Baglivi’s works, as the one proposed by Pennuto. In fact, this new edition of De anatome not only presents the Latin text and its translation, but also a complete critical section, provided with a rich and thorough appa- ratus of historical and bibliographical notes, which allow us both to explore the scientific and medical sources used by the author (among others, Epifanio Ferdinando, Athanasius Kircher, Martin Lister, , Antonio Buli- fon, Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, Robert Boyle) and to deepen the main themes discussed throughout the dissertation according to the most recent literature. Baglivi’s De anatome was completed on April 1, 1694 in order to be published in Manget’s Bibliotheca medico-practica, a 4-volume collection of medical lit- erature on diseases and therapeutics, also focusing on wounds and poisons, but it appeared instead firstly in De praxi medica (1696). Although still strictly connected to the folk interpretation of tarantism as caused by the bite of taran- tulas, this work represents a turning point in the attempt to medicalize it: Baglivi investigates the etiopathology of the disease and examines the therapy adopted, explaining both the action of the poison and the effects of music from a mechanistic point of view. In addition to the history of the text provided by the editor, it is worth remembering that the content of this dissertation was also positively welcomed by the Arcadia academy, where Baglivi was enrolled with the nickname “Epidauro Pirgense.” In fact, the second book of L’Arcadia (1708), written by Giovanni Mario Crescimbeni, the founder and the first secre- tary of the academy, clearly refers to Baglivi-Epidauro’s De anatome. Moreover, this work has opened a lively scientific debate: in the 18th century, for example, we can refer to Nicola Caputi’s De Tarantulae anatome, et morsu (Lecce, 1741) or Francesco Serao’s Della tarantola o sia Falangio di Puglia (Naples, 1742), which strongly challenged the traditional view on tarantism, in particular the key role of the bite. Baglivi’s De anatome consists of thirteen chapters. In chs. 1–4, we find a detailed description of the tarantula: its denomination, its anatomy and its habitat in Apulia. This is a key point because Baglivi believes that the patho- genic action of the bite entirely depends on the particular climatic temper- ament of the area where the tarantula lives. Originally, Baglivi provided his description with only one illustration, which was mainly inspired by the one offered by Antonio Bulifon in Lettere memorabili (1693). Pennuto has included both images in order to show all the similarities. In chs. 5–7, Baglivi analyses the bite of the tarantula and its effects on the human body depending on the poison inoculated. Moreover, in ch. 7, Baglivi introduces the well-known distinction between a ‘true’ tarantism and a ‘fake’ one, which he calls “Carnevaletto delle donne:” according to him, women affected by melancholy simulate this disease,

Nuncius 30 (2015) 715–753