title: [Health anthropology and hospital archiving. The Museum of Pathological Anatomy of the City Hospital of Trieste].
abstract: The preparations found in the Trieste Hospital Museum of Pathological Anatomy fit into the context of a medical semiotics which has its origins in the anatomical clinical method. The study of the practices involved in the museum preparation leads back to its purely diagnostic function inasmuch as it convalidates or contradicts the suppositions that, from the symptomatological case history, made from the study of the lesions and the diseased organ. This whole investigative process corresponds to a break in the field of scientific knowledge which marks the birth of a new approach to diagnosis and a new form of nosology, made possible by the great number of sick people and deaths available in a modern hospital. The Museum is permeated with empiricism, morphologism and localisation, and its exhibits fluctuate between macroscopic and microscopic anatomy, between organic and cellular pathology. In the exhibits of infectious and contagious diseases, one can see traces of the revolution brought about by bacteriology and laboratory techniques; in the considerable collection of malignant tumours, one can detect an oncological awareness which relates explicitly to a nosology based on the work of Virchow. The preparations which refer to pathologies that cannot be reduced simply to localisation illustrate an increasing awareness of functional medicine and clinical biochemistry. The Museum has the task of showing and teaching in order to train the hospital doctor. The Museum--through pathological anatomy--directed the community towards a knowledge of healthcare methods destined to change the morbidity and mortality rates due to a certain disease, in relation to those diseases typical of the times.
authors.affiliation: Centro Interdipartimentale per la Storia delle Malattie Mentali Università degli Studi di Siena, Via Fabiano 9, I-52100 Arezzo, Italia. braulinfrei@tiscalinet.it
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Braulin
mesh_terms: D001109:Archives / Q000266:history; D000013:Congenital Abnormalities / Q000266:history / Q000473:pathology; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006773:Hospitals, Municipal / Q000266:history; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy; D009144:Museums / Q000266:history; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000266:history / Q000473:pathology; D010336:Pathology / Q000266:history*; D011309:Preservation, Biological / Q000266:history