A MOST UNUSUAL MUSEUM

Although I had visited Modica seventeen times before settling here and have been here for over two years , I would not have known of the existence of the Museo Tommaso Campailla had I not chanced upon a newspaper article about it last month. Tucked away in two rooms in what was the Ospedale Santa Maria della Pietà and is now a municipal office building behind the Piazza Matteotti in Modica Bassa, the museum is not signposted, nor is it mentioned in any guide book which I have consulted. To visit, you have to make an appointment and this was not easy: of course no one answered the number given in the newspaper during August and when I did get through this week I was told I would have to ring another number. This, in turn, proved to be a wrong one and eventually I rang the tourist office and yes, it is their staff who have the keys and act as guides for the visit, so I made an appointment for yesterday morning. To my shame, I arrived there in the good old Italian punctuality tradition of 45 minutes late, due to the fact that a one-way system has been introduced in the via Sacro Cuore, causing buses to be rerouted and resulting in chaos [which I am sure to rant about at length in another post]. I apologised and was told there was no problem. Sometimes there is much to be said for those with pazienza.

The museum is unusual because it is devoted to the treatment of syphilis. Tommaso Campailla [1668 - 1740] was first famous as a poet and philosopher. He was admired by the Irish philosopher George Berkeley who came to Modica to meet him. It was not until the death of his father that Campailla was able to indulge his passion for medicine, for at that time, the profession was not considered respectable. I have been unable to ascertain why or how he became interested in the treatment of venereal diseases, but treat them he did, creating wooden botti [barrels] for the patients to sit in and inhale mercury infusions , an idea that appears to have been pioneered in France, where the patient's head would project from the top of the "barrel". Campailla's design was squarer, and the patient sat with his /her whole body in the "cabin". The wood was of a special kind which Campailla ordered from abroad and to this day, no one knows exactly what it was.

First the "cabin" was heated to 70 F by a brazier and then, the brazier removed, the patient would enter, carrying a small oil lamp for light, which he / she would hang on a nail, and a smaller brazier which he / she would place on the ground beneath his / her feet. [Many prostitutes were treated.]There were two holes in the door of the cabin, and through the top one the patient was monitored. Through the second, at the bottom of the door, the mercury infusion was poured onto the small brazier. The dose for a first treatment was half a gram of cinnabar and a pinch of incense [the incense being added to facilitate breathing]. This was doubled at the next treatment. Eventually, the patient would sweat the infusion off, back onto the small brazier. The sessions lasted for ten minutes, on alternate days, and normally a patient would have nine or ten treatments. In more serious cases, two grams of cinnabar would be used and the patient would receive up to thirteen treatments. After a "cabin" session the patient would lie on a bed to continue the "sweating it out" process. By all accounts the treatments worked provided the disease was caught early enough and some patients with rheumatic conditions were also treated.

In the pictures you can see the actual botti and some of the instruments used. The fifth photo shows an instrument for separating blood from plasma and on the right of the seventh one you can see early electrical centrifuges. The last picture shows a chair, from a later era, which was used for gynaecological examinations, for the building continued to be used as a hospital for many years. Campailla's methods were used until the discovery of penicillin.