1.
Bernardino Ramazzini's De Morbis Artificum Diatriba on Workers' Health-the Birth of a New Discipline.
Franco, G
Journal of UOEH. 2021;(3):341-348
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Abstract
This paper provides a picture of the observations made over three hundred years ago by Bernardino Ramazzini (1633-1714) in light of current topical issues ranging from health problems related to work and lifestyle habits to the current burdensome COVID-19 pandemic. The main aspects of his work consist of descriptions of disorders linked to environmental risks, suggestions for measures for risk protection, and recommendations for healthy living. This paper focuses on Ramazzini's most relevant achievements by (1) analyzing the episodes that stimulated the composition of his main work and highlighting some observations on which current epidemiological and toxicological studies are based; (2) reviewing his work showing not only the systematic descriptions of work-related illnesses caused by occupational factors but also his sound etiological and physiopathological contributions to the field of occupational lung diseases, breast cancer, and environmental disorders; and (3) remarking on his main observations in the fields of risk prevention and health promotion, also in the light of some highly topical issues related to unhealthy lifestyle habits and the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Sciences of appetite in the Enlightenment, 1750-1800.
Williams, EA
Studies in history and philosophy of biological and biomedical sciences. 2012;(2):392-404
Abstract
Advice about diet has been an important part of Western medicine from its inception. Although based partly on the presumed qualities and effects of foodstuffs, such advice rested chiefly on the constitution and circumstances of individual patients, including their unique appetites and eating habits. In the eighteenth century the nature of appetite itself came to be a subject of growing interest in the sciences, especially in medicine, natural history, and physiology. Within these sciences attention to the eating proclivities of individuals began to be displaced by interest in uniform processes of ingestion and digestion. In turn dietary advice came increasingly to rely on general standards of health and the digestibility of foodstuffs. Central to the promotion of uniform standards was the increasing credence given to experimental procedures that claimed to offer new certainties about the digestive process. As experimental science took hold, appetite, long regarded as a perplexing blend of psychic and somatic elements, assumed subordinate status as an object of inquiry to phenomena thought readily susceptible to laboratory manipulation. These eighteenth-century developments stand at the origin of the modern nutritional science that denigrates individual appetites in favor of universal rules of 'healthy eating.'