Unusual Vicenza: Discovering the Magic

Venice does not need an introduction. Many tourists visiting Venice have also heard of Verona. However, very few persons visiting Venice and Verona know of Padova and Vicenza.

Vicenza is counted among the 4 beautiful cities in the Veneto region in north-east of Italy along with Venice, Padova and Verona. Each of these cities is a concentration of history, art and culture. At the same time, each of these cities is distinctive - Venice is the city of canals, Padova is the oldest European university and the city of the saints (St Anthony and St Justine), Verona is the city of Romeo and Juliet, while Vicenza is the city of the architect Andrea Palladio and is a World Heritage city for UNESCO.

This post is an introduction to Vicenza, which has a large number of buildings designed by Andrea Palladio, one of the most influential architects of recent history. For example, his little gem, Villa Rontonda (in the image above), has inspired many patrician houses around the world including the White House.

This post is also about unusual ways for discovering the city's magic, seen through my eyes of nostalgia and through the eyes of Chiara Pesavento, who is passionate about languages, history and culture of this city.

Vicenza of My Memories

I had come to Vicenza in 1979 and stayed for a period at the guesthouse of the Filippini Church along the city's central street called Corso Palladio. Listening from my room on the second floor to the concerts of organ music held in the church below, is one of my first memories of this city and of Italy. At that time I was not very familiar with the western classical music and I remember my shock when it had happened for the first time - I felt surrounded by the warm pulsating embrace of the music as it had filled my room, it was absolutely amazing. Probably the particular acoustics of that building had something to do with that experience.

"Ai Filippini" was a 2 minutes walk from the city's central square, Piazza dei Signori (Lords' Square), where I remember spending hours on the weakends, admiring the absolutely amazing Loggia del Capitanio and the imposing Basilica with its green domed roof. Both these buildings were the works of Andrea Palladio, though at that time I had no idea about who he was!

I loved sketching in those days and that had helped me to become familiar with different landmarks of the city including the incredible Olympic theatre, Chiericati Palace Museum, Montanari Palace and 2 wonderfully landscaped parks - Querini park and Salvi park. Another of my favourites memories is that of the climb to the Monte Berico church at the top of the hill overlooking the city. The image (above) presents one of my sketches of the Piazza dei Signori from those days.

When I look back, I feel that I was fortunate to have the introduction to the historical and cultural treasures of Italy through the unassuming and lesser-known Vicenza. Most tourists to Italy know of Rome, Florence, Pisa, Venice and Pompei. A few more discerning ones know about Bologna, Naples, Verona or 5 Terre. Relatively few think of visiting Padova or Vicenza. Knowing Italy through Vicenza has taught me about the joys of visiting smaller and relatively lesser known Italian towns to discover their hidden gems of history, art and culture.

Today, I live in Schio, a tiny town situated 20 km from Vicenza. Even Schio and many other smaller towns of the province of Vicenza, such as Thiene, Bassano del Grappa and Marostica, have so many historical, artistic and cultural sites to discover, that would be impossible to find in any other country! Anyway, enough about my memories of Vicenza - let me now give you a brief glimpse of the town through the eyes of Chiara Pesavento, who is more qualified to talk about it.

About Chiara Pesavento

Chiara Pesavento is a tourist guide in Vicenza, active in this role since 2006. Her decision to become a tourist guide can be traced to a visit to an art collection in Chiericati Palace Museum as a child, when she was struck by the description of a painting by the guide. "Suddenly that uninteresting piece of art acquired details and a depth of meaning" she explains, "and I knew that I wanted to be a tourist guide."

She also had a passion for learning languages (she speaks Spanish, French and English) and loves meeting persons from different countries. All these skills combined to create a person who is passionate about the history, art and culture of her town, and she loves to share these passions with people who come to visit Vicenza. For this post, I asked her to talk about some special thematic tours, which help in discovering lesser-known aspects of this city.

Unusual Vicenza

One of Chiara's favourite tours of Vicenza is called "The lost treasures". For this tour, she uses old city maps from '700 to visit and understand how the city has changed over the past centuries. It means going around to see buildings that are not there anymore and to hear about the history of what had happened and how the city had changed. This also helps in understanding the old toponomies of the town. For example, there were about 50 churches in Vicenza in late medieval period, out of which only 17 are still there today, while the remaining are lost. Many of these were lost during the occupation of the city by Napoleon Bonaparte. This tour lets you understand the impact of that occupation.

Another tour of the city is through its art collections. The art collection at Chiericati palace museum, the collection of 18th century Venetian art at Montanari palace, the sacred-art collection at the Diocesan museum and the different art works in the city churches - if you love art, there is so much to see and discover in Vicenza. For example, the St. Corona church has the altar and a painting by one of the famous Venetian artists, Giovanni Bellini.

About 500 years ago, Antonio Pigafetta, a writer, navigator and geography expert from Vicenza, had completed an around-the-world trip. To celebrate this event, together with her colleagues, Chiara proposes the "Pigafetta tours of Vicenza", to discover the Gothic town of the 15th century. It was a period when the town was recovering from the plague epidemic, agricultural crisis and famines. The tour allows the visitors to look at the buildings from that era and to understand the life of those times.

Chiara feels that there are many aspects of the city linked with its artisans and production systems, which are equally valuable to visit and to know better. For example, Vicenza has long traditions of wool and silk production since 15th century. It is also known for it goldsmith artisans. Another example is that of specialised printing such as the Busato artistic printing press specialised in chalcography (bronze plate engraving for printing), lithography (printing with stone or metal plate) and xylography (wood-block printing). She feels that tours to visit and see these artisans at work can be another interesting way to discover and understand the city.

Conclusions

With the Covid-19 epidemic, few persons are travelling around. However, hopefully soon this epidemic will be over and persons will start travelling and visiting other countries. Personally, I miss my travelling very much. However, not to be able to travel to far-away places has a positive side-effect - I can go back and rediscover my old favourite towns like Vicenza.

When travelling will become possible and you will plan a visit to Venice and surrounding cities, I suggest that you keep a few days to discover towns like Vicenza, Padova and Verona, and to visit the smaller provincial towns of Vicenza such as Schio, Bassano and Marostica.

If you want to contact Chiara Pesavento, you can check her website - Vicenza Tourist Guide.

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Snakes, Merchants & Emigrants - Gun Island

Finally, I have read Amitabh Ghosh’s latest book “Gun Island” (Penguin, 2019). This book can be looked at different levels – as the exploration of an old Bengali fable, as a modern fable on emigration, as a cry of alarm about the looming environmental catastrophe, as an understanding of ancient links between India and Venice/Venetian republic in northern Italy, as a book about books, and probably many more.

For me personally, this book’s theme has a special resonance because it touches on the worlds which I inhabit – that of India, from where I come, and of Venice, where I live; and those of emigrants and refugees, especially those coming here from the Indian subcontinent, with whom I identify and sometimes work as a volunteer.

At one level, I was a little disappointed while reading this book because it lacked the immersive imagined worlds which Ghosh can create with his words. It is a fable and thus, chance, destiny and miracles play a disproportionate role in moving and shaping the story and these elements do not need to be always plausible. At another level, I was fascinated by its complexity in bringing together so many themes, and now after finishing reading it, I keep on thinking about them and discovering new angles and inter-connections to them.

Themes of the Book

Its themes are like rivers, sometimes flowing in parallel, sometimes inter-mixing and sometimes changing their course as the story moves, from Sundarbans in India, to Venice and then finally to Sicily. Some of them take centre-stage for some time, only to go underground for long tracts, waiting for another opportunity to emerge. The book has a big canvass but most of the time, it skims on its surface and does not delve deeper.

The book is equally divided into 2 parts - the first part is based inIndia, in Kolkata and the second, in Italy and mostly in Venice.

Book summary: Dinanath Dutta or Dino, as his Italian friend Cinta (Giacinta) calls him, is a solitary ageing dealer of rare books from USA and is the narrator of the book. Back to his home-town Kolkata for a holiday, he encounters people from “The hungry Tide”, Ghosh’s book about river dolphins in Sundarbans, which had come out 16 years ago in 2004. Piya, the young Indo-American researcher working on the river-dolphins from that book, is now older but still single and the love-story between DN and Piya is a tiny river in the book, which emerges in the beginning and then disappears, only to re-emerge and conclude happily at the end.

Apart from “The hungry tide”, the book also makes some references to the slave trade ships and the ship-journeys of indentured workers from India, the subject of Ghosh’s recent Ibis trilogy, starting with “The Sea of Poppies”.

The book also makes different references to other authors and their books, especially to the literary world of Italian author Emilio Salgari, known for his books about exotic India of thugs, princesses and pirates, some of which were centred around Sundarbans and were used for creating some TV serials such as Sandokan in the 1970s. Today Salgari is not very popular among children in Italy, but his books were a major influence till about 30-40 years ago, in shaping popular ideas in about India.

The legend of “Banduki Saudagar” linked with a shrine in Sundarbans, is the seed of the book, which guides the whole story. It brings out surprising connections between India and the merchants of the Venetian republic in 17th-18th centuries. The same legend brings DN to Venice, the Banduki (gun) island, where he fortuitously meets the friends he had met in Sundarbans – Tipu, the son of the boatman from “The Hungry Tide” and Rafi, the son of the care-taker of the shrine in the Sundarbans, along with other emigrants from Bangladesh.

The final part of the book, where Ghosh gives a historical overview of peoples’ movements across the world, starting from the millions of persons from villages and towns taken by the colonial masters and transplanted in far-away lands, and links it with today’s emigrants who start similar life-threatening journeys in search for a better life, is my favourite part of this book. Let me quote a few brief passages from this part: 

Yet there was a vital difference – the system of indentured labour, like chattel slavery before it, had always been managed and controlled by European imperial powers. The coolies often had no idea of where they were going or of the conditions that awaited them there; nor did they know much about the laws and regulations that governed their destiny. ...But all of that was now completely reversed.Rafi, Tipu and their fellow migrants had launched their own journeys, just as I had, long before them; as with me, their travels had been enabled by their own networks, and they, like me, were completely conversant with the laws and regulations of the countries they were heading to. Instead, it was the countries of the West that now knew very little about the people who were flocking towards them. ...I saw now why the angry young men on the boats around us were so afraid of that derelict refugee boat: that tiny vessel represented the overturning of a centuries-old project that had been essential to the shaping of Europe. Beginning with the early days of chattel slavery, the European imperial powers had launched upon the greatest and most cruel experiment in planetary remaking that history has ever known: in the service of commerce they had transported people between continents on an almost unimaginable scale, ultimately changing the demographic profile of the entire planet. But even as they were repopulating other continents they had always tried to preserve the whiteness of their own metropolitan territories in Europe.

Few Comments: Ghosh is very eloquent in this part in presenting today's emigration as a kind of retribution of the colonial plundering of the world. However, I am not sure if real-life works like that. Italy was not much of an imperial power, except for a brief spell in Abyssinia (today's Ethiopia-Eritrea). I believe that "Preservation of Whiteness" is not enough to explain the fear of immigrants among the young men in Italy as proposed by Ghosh in his book, it is much more complex and has also to do with religion, culture, language and social norms.

I also think that it is not the young men, as the main demographic group, who are afraid of emigrants. Young people mix much more with persons of other cultures. Instead, it is the older-age groups including the elderly persons, who are more afraid of emigrants and of the changing landscapes of their towns and squares. 

Different episodes of the book ask you to believe in supernatural forces shaping the world, including the old fable of Banduki Saudagar inter-mixed with the Manasa Devi legend from north-east of India. At times, I found that a bit jarring.

The final conclusion of the book seems to be written for a Hollywood film with an Ethiopian woman standing tall in a little boat full of a ragtag bunch of emigrants, lit by a green fluorescence, with dancing dolphins and whales and a sky full of thousands of migrating birds.

Thunderstorms, islands getting submerged in the sea, tropical spiders in Venetian homes and shipworms eating the wooden base on which Venice is standing, strange and extreme weather events including the high tides which drown Venice frequently, dying dolphins and whales, sea-monsters in the Venice lagoon, all make an appearance in the book to underline the dangers of climate change.

Other Aspects of Illegal Emigration

The book touches on some uncomfortable aspects of illegal emigration, including the links with different branches of mafia of different countries which controls this traffic, but mostly it glosses over these aspects. The network which facilitates this traffic and lures unsuspecting young men (and some women, mainly from Africa) full of dreams, who take loans and sell their properties, to embark on a journey that takes years of their lives, often including passages during which they are forced into slave labour or even sexual labour and sometimes ends in drugs, alcoholism or prisons, is seen only in brief glimpses.

"Without the guys from Bangladesh, Venice won’t survive, because they do everything which local Italians don’t do", the book explains. The other side of this story is that emigrants can be asked to work with one third of the minimum salary, without a proper social security cover and to do long shifts, all conditions which locals do not accept and emigrants are too weak to resist.

Often the families of these immigrants think that they are living in Europe and imagine the European lives they see on TV and films, and keep on asking for money and other things from their sons and brothers. A few of them do find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but for almost all of them, the dream of that pot of gold extracts a heavy price, as shown through the words of "Palash" in this book, who hides behind a pseudonym in the book:

It’s impossible for me to go back now. My family still does not know that I dropped out of university and am now scraping by on the streets. My parents would not be able to imagine that a son of theirs was doing that kind of work. They think I’m still a student going to lectures and writing papers, at my university. If I tell them the truth now I would have to admit that I had been lying all along; that they were right to tell me not to go abroad; that I had made a terrible mistake and would have done better to listen to their advice. I would have to acknowledge that in chasing a dream I destroyed my life.
There is another dimension of emigration which is mostly left untouched in the book – it is that of a conservative version of Islam among a percentage of emigrants and the backlash that it provokes, especially in small towns and communities in Europe and its perceived links with radical Islam. Ghosh touches on it only briefly through a clumsy air-travel scene, where DN's agitation due to vision of snakes and the accidental switching on of an “Allah” song sung by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan leads to panic among the passengers, thinking that he is a terrorist.

Conclusions

Quality of Story Telling in Gun Island: I think that this book Gun Island is substantially different from Ghosh’s earlier works. He has a way with his words, and this book also gives him plenty of opportunities to show-off those word-building skills, to weave unexpected inter-connections. However, that pleasure of reading is hampered by feelings of disbelief because of too many coincidences, convenient dreams and visions and some cheesy miracles which dot the whole book. While reading it, I wondered if he has become lazier as a writer or does he let himself be guided too much by his concerns and activism for the climate?

Books' Characters: Compared to his earlier books, especially the ones from the Ibis trilogy, which had a whole bunch of characters that I had liked, I did not find any such character in this book. For me, both DN and Piya were kind of colourless persons. Tipu and Rafi were a bit more alive, but were difficult to identify with. Even the character of Cinta was, at times, a bit of a caricature.

I know that Ghosh has been campaigning over the past few years for greater awareness and action on the issue of climate change. Even in this book, climate change is a key force shaping the events. Yet, I felt that by bringing in the fables, supernatural forces and miracles, he seems to be saying that we don’t need to worry about the climate change and the earth or the nature will do something to right this situation – I am not sure if he actually wanted to give this message.

To conclude, for me Ghosh is one of the best story-tellers of our times. With that kind of placement on a high pedestal, for me reading this book was not as fulfilling as his previous works.

***

10 Things to do in Schio

If you are you visiting Schio (Province of Vicenza in north-east of Italy), this post is for you. It presents my list of 10 things to do or to see in the centre of Schio - all the places indicated in this post are at walkable distance from the city centre.

Schio is a small town located on the foothills of Alps mountains. If you like history, culture and picturesque places where you can go for walks, then Schio is worth a visit, as this post will show you.

I will do a separate post for all the beautiful places around Schio, and there are a lot of them. This post is limited to the places in or near the city centre.

Schio - General Information

Schio comes under the province of Vicenza (28 km away) in the Veneto region. Nearby other well-known towns include Venice (120 km), Verona (95 km) and Padova (67 km). It is located in the northern part of Veneto, on the foothills of mountains known as Piccole Dolomiti (small Dolomites). It is connected to Vicenza by local trains (1 hour journey) and the state bus service. Schio's history goes back to at least the Roman times when it was called Scledum.

Vicenza is on the Venice-Milan and Venice-Trento-Bolzano train lines, and is thus well connected to trains from Switzerland, Austria and northern Europe. On the other hand, to go to Rome and south Italy, you need to change the train at Padova.

Schio was famous in 19-20th centuries for its wool mills. The biggest mill belonged to the Rossi family. Because of those wool mills it was one of the important industrial towns and was called the Manchester of Italy.

A hill crosses the town from south-east to the north-west - the eastern tip of this hill has the Duomo (cathedral) and the castle of Schio, while a Cappuchin monastery occupies the western end of this hill. A historical lithograph of Schio from 1864, commissioned by Alessandro Rossi, in the image below (curtsey @schiocultura) shows the area of Fabbrica Alta, as well as the San Rocco church on the hill in the right side with the Pasubio mountain in the background.

With this basic information, let me start with my list of 10 things to see/visit/do in the centre of Schio.

1. Duomo of Schio

The Duomo (Cathedral) of Schio is located in the city centre on the Rossi square and is an imposing structure atop a hillock, converted into a high platform with stairs going up on the two sides. It is dedicated to St. Peter. It was built in the 14th century. The present layout of the buildings was given more recently - it was started in 1747 and completed almost 130 years later in 1879.

The entrance of the cathedral has the sculptures of the 4 evangelists and a strip of bass-relief showing episodes from the life of St. Peter. Inside, among the different art works you can see a Madonna by the Venetian artist Jacopo Palma from the 16th century.

You can also admire the view of city and the surrounding mountains from the terrace of the Duomo.

2. Castle of Schio

The old castle of Schio was located at a higher level compared to the Duomo hill. It was built in the iron age and was dismantled in 15th century. Today only the old tower of the castle along with a more recent church (Santa Maria della Neve) remain on the hill. The church is no longer used for religious purposes and hosts the photography club of Schio.

Stairs from different sides of the hill go up to the castle, making it a short but invigorating walk. On the hill in front of the church you can see the base of two old towers of the castle. From here you also have a lovely view of the mountains surrounding the city.

At the base of the castle hill, a tunnel was constructed during the Second World War as a bomb-refuge. It is around 100 metres long and is now used by a local dairy company for stocking its local cheese, sold as "Formaggio della Grotta" (The cave cheese of Schio).

3. St. Francis church

The 15th century St. Francis church is located at the north-eastern edge of the central hill. It is one of the most beautiful buildings of Schio, with a stone bell-tower. Among the artworks, it hosts a luminous altarpiece by the artist Francesco Verla from early 16th century, which has been recently renovated.

Next to the church is an old Franciscan monastery, which does not have any monks at present. Part of it is used by a woman's self-help group called Daisy - they accompany the tourists to visit the church on Friday & Saturday afternoons. The church also opens in the mornings for the daily Mass.

4. Valletta

In front of the St. Francis church starts the Parco della Valletta (Little valley's park), a green oasis in the centre of Schio. It is characterised by century old trees and pathways going up and down the hill. From the park some of the views of the surrounding mountains are beautiful.

Coming out from St. Francis church, if you follow the road going downwards on the left (Via Grumi dei Frati), you can walk down to see a small beautiful chapel along the roadside - it is the 16th century chapel called Madonna della Salute, with a small water-canal passing underneath it. Behind the chapel is an arch from where you can climb the stairs to go back towards the Castle.

To the left of the chapel, another set of stairs also take you up towards the castle.

5. Piazza Rossi & Piazza Garibaldi

Via Pasini is the main road with shops passing through the old city centre of Schio, starting near Piazza Rossi and the Duomo. Piazza Garibaldi marks the beginning of Via Pasini. This is a pedestrian area of Schio. The two little squares, Piazza Garibaldi and Piazza Rossi, are inter-connected and have different bars with tables on the street, where you can sit and soak in the city atmosphere. Weekends usually have live music shows in one of the bars, along with buskers playing music on the sides.

From Piazza Garibaldi, the road going up towards the castle has another couple of bars that you may wish to explore and to taste some of the local beers. If you are visiting Schio, remember to spend an evening sitting there and watching the people having a drink while they exchange the latest gossip.

The city organises different festivals including the British Day (in October) and Cosplay (in April). On Wednesday and Saturday mornings it has the weekly market. The area of Piazza Rossi-Piazza Garibaldi is usually the central point of all these festivities & markets. While you are there, do not forget to look at the historical statue of Il Tessitore (the weaver) in Piazza Rossi, which is the symbol of Schio.

6. Palazzo Fogazzaro

Along Via Pasini, the central road of old Schio, you can see the municipal building (Garbin Palace) and the 18th century Fogazzaro Palace. Built in the Palladio style, the Fogazzaro Palace is the cultural centre of Schio. It hosts many history, art and photography exhibitions, seminars and events, including the Biennale of Schio which focuses on Papermade art, which has been held regularly since 2013 and brings together artists from numerous countries across the world.

Till early part of 20th century, the main water canal of Schio called Roggia Maestra used to cross Via Pasini with a bridge on it and was therefore known as Via Oltre-Ponte.

The image below shows an art work by Wilhelm Senoner from an exhibition held in Fogazzaro Palace in 2019-20.

Across the road, you can take the Garbin underpass to go to Piazza Statuto to look at the main entrance of the municipal building. This square usually hosts a car parking, so it does not look very exciting. However on the days of the weekly market (Wednesday and Saturday), it gets a make-over and you can admire it better.

7. Toaldi Capra Palace

Via Pasubio, the second main street of the old city centre, starts from Via Pasini in the middle and proceeds northwards. On this road you can see different medieval houses of the rich families of Schio including the 13th century Toaldi-Capra palace. This building was used as the municipal building till the first World war. The first floor of this building has frescoes from 15th century.

Like the Fogazzaro palace, Toaldi Capra Palace is also an important site of cultural initiatives in Schio. Its courtyard hosts an open-air theatre which has dance and theatre performances, as well as, the summer film festival (the image below shows a historical enactment of the fall of the Venice Republic in 1797 in the open-air theatre of the Toaldi-Capra Palace).

The palace also hosts art and photography exhibitions, while the rooms on the first floor hold conferences and seminars.

Via Pasubio is also the site of biannual Sareo Art Festival (which had been suspended between 2020-2021 due to Covid-19) during which local artists and artisans show their works in an open air exhibition.

8. Jacquard Gardens and Industrial Archaeology

In the 18th century Schio had become an important industrial centre with different wool mills. These were powered by the waters of Leogra torrent through a canal known as Roggia Maestra. For the workers of the wool mills, new housing areas were created. The old mills, the houses of the mill-workers and the water canals, together form the industrial archaeology area of Schio.

There are 3 old wool mills near the Schio city centre. The Conte wool mill, which is now converted into a cultural space (the Shed) where art and photography exhibitions are organised. It is located on Via Pasubio, a little further down the road from Toaldi-Capra palace. Inside, this building you can also see the water canal of Roggia Maestra with its swirling waters (the image below shows an art exhibition in the Shed).

A little further down Via Pasubio is the Fabbrica Alta (High Mill), which was the biggest wool mill of Schio and belonged to the Rossi family. The grounds of Fabbrica Alta hold music shows and garden shows while the city is discussing how best to use its old buildings.

Across the road from the entrance of Fabbrica Alta are the Jacquard gardens, built for the mill workers in late 19th century. The gardens include a theatre, artificial caves, fountains, a glass-house and some sculptures. This park is open on summer weekends. From one side of the gardens, you can also admire the beautiful San Rocco church with its lovely bell-tower, located on the Castle hill, next to the gardens.

The third wool mill, Cazzola, was located further outside the central area along Via Pietro Riboli. During the first world war, this was converted into a field hospital where the well-known American writer Ernest Hemmingway worked as an ambulance driver. One of the side-streets behind the old wool-mill is named in his honour.

To look at the area which had the mill-workers houses, you need to walk from the city centre towards the Leogra torrent. Different criss-crossing roads such as Fusinieri, Tessitori, Rossi, Cimatori, etc. are all part of the industrial archaeological area.

You can also take a short walk along the torrent in the Via Lungo Leogra and take a selfie from its bridge, from where you have an excellent view of some of the beautiful mountains surrounding the town (the image below shows the torrent with reduced water-flow in the summer).

9. Civic Theater

The Civic Theatre was built in early 20th century and is situated on Via Maraschin. During the theatre season, it has a rich calendar of plays and concerts. Parts of the civic theatre are being renovated (winter 2020). Inside, the theatre has a beautiful frescoed first-floor hall.

The Civic Theatre also conducts theatre, dance and creativity workshops with schools, elderly persons and other groups.

Across the street from the Civic Theatre, you can walk to big central square of Schio - Piazza Falcone-Borsellino. It has a model showing the different mountains around the city and their names & heights. It also has a war memorial. Finally, my favourite place in this square, is a sculpture by Alfonso Fontana of a fountain with birds and children (the image below shows an overview of Falcone-Borsellino square seen from the back of Fogazzaro Palace).

10. Mother Bakhita church

Mother Bakhita was a catholic nun in the congregation of Figlie della Carita Canossiane (Canossian Daughters of Charity). Originally from Darfur (Sudan), she was kidnapped and sold as a slave when she was 9 years old. Destiny brought her first to Venice and then to Schio in late 19th century. She died here in 1947 and was declared a saint in 2000.

Followers of Saint Bakhita come to visit Schio from different countries. Her church is located in Via Fusinato, not far from the Duomo.

Conclusions

As you can see, even if Schio is only a tiny town, it has a few things to see and do for the visitors. The town is surrounded by beautiful places to visit, especially in the mountains and lakes, starting with the two mountains which guard the north and east of the town - Monte Summano and Monte Novegno. About all these, I will write in another post.

I first came to visit Schio in 1982. My wife's family had been living in the old mill-workers' area since late 19th century. After my retirement, we are living in that same family house where my wife, her father and her grand-father were born. I love living here - I love the view of the mountains, its roads going up and down and the numerous cultural opportunities it provides. It just needs a short bicycle ride to leave the city and to be in the beautiful countryside surrounding Schio, as shown in the view from Via Broglio below.

I had decided to limit this post to 10 places. This meant that I was unable to include some of my favourite places of the city in this list.

For example, I also recommend the walk from the castle towards the Capuchin monastery in the evening for breath-taking views of the mountains; and if you have time, go to the crossing between Via Bosco and Via Fogazzaro to see the lavandaia (washer woman) sculpture and the place along Roggia Maestra where the local women used to wash laundry till mid-20th century.

*****

#schio #visitschio #schiotourism #placestovisitinschio #beautifulveneto #vicenza #italy

Cooking For The Dictators

When I read the premise of the Polish journalist Witold Szablowski's book "How to feed a dictator", I was immediately hooked. In this book he has interviewed the personal cooks of some of the more infamous dictators of 20th century, most of whom were also known mass-murderers.

I think that to have the deaths of hundreds of persons on your conscience and to live with that burden, you have to be some kind of psychopath. The history shows that often these persons also had charismatic personalities, as epitomized by Hitler and Stalin. These persons have their die-hard fans, who continue to be their followers even after listening to the stories of tortures and violence committed by their idols. Both, fascism and communism attract believers, similar to the attraction of radical religious ideas for certain persons. Believers and followers are necessary to make these persons what they finally become.

I was curious to know, how did their cooks, who have an opportunity to observe their bosses in their private and personal moments, saw those monsters? I finished the 200 pages-long book in 2 days. The insight it gave me is the extreme banality of becoming dictators - ideology can blind people and make them do all kind of things which facilitates dictatorship!

Some Personal Background

Let me start with a confession - lately I seem to have become very weak-hearted. I can't watch any scenes of gory violence or the horror films. I also can't read any books about violence. Earlier, I was not so weak-hearted, but over the past few years, I just can't bear the feelings of dread such films/books can create.

Thus, reading Szablowski's book was an unusual decision for me. I started reading it with the idea that if it had any graphic scenes of violence or torture, I would stop reading it. However, it does not go into the details of the deeds of those dictators. Most of the time, Szablowski only skims the surface, giving superficial accounts of the killings and the tortures.

During my travels around the world, I have been to many countries with communist regimes and some countries with dictators. Once, I even risked being taken prisoner by a group of communist guerrilla fighters. Listening to the stories of persons who had lived in these places, has cured me forever of the romantic ideas about revolutions and the charm of all kinds of ideologies such as communism and fascism.

I believe that violent struggle/revolution to fight against injustice and oppression is not a solution - it substitutes one kind of oppression and injustice with another kind, which is usually equally ferocious and implacable, and sometimes worse than what it replaces. Szablowsky's book has many stories about it.

Sometimes, I used to have long and animated debates with friends who believe in communism - I have learned to not argue with them. They are blinded by their beliefs and there is nothing I can say which can convince them otherwise. For example, I am sure that they can read Szablowski's book and find justifications for everything.

Dictators in Szablowski's Book

In his book Szablowski presents the stories of the cooks of 5 dictators - Saddam Hussein (Iraq), Idi Amin (Uganda), Enver Hoxha (Albania), Fidel Castro (Cuba) and Pol Pot (Cambodia).

I already knew many things about all of them except for Enver Hoxha, the communist dictator of Albania. To read about him was a revelation. All the 5 protagonists of this book were paranoid personalities or perhaps, it would be better to say that once you become a ruthless dictator and are forced to kill people or to get them killed, you have no option but to become paranoid.

All the cooks of this book are men, except for the cook of Pol Pot. All of them, were associated with their bosses from their early carriers, before they had become the famous dictators. All were forced to become cooks because their bosses were suspicious of others and wanted someone they knew for this role. All of them walked on a tightrope, aware that their boss may suddenly feel that they are not faithful and decide to get them killed. Any dish cooked with too little or too much salt could have been seen as an attempt to poison.

The cooks' stories bring out the insecure men hiding behind the persona of ferocious dictator for whom they were working. Their stories bring out the specific personal traits of each of them, like Fidel Castro, who thought that he knew everything and gave long and boring lectures to everyone about how to do something, including to his cook. These parts of their stories give a comic touch to the book, even while in the background, the purges continue and the people surrounding the dictators fall out of favour and disappear.

The most fearsome person in the book is Pol Pot, also known as Brother Pouk or Brother Mattress or Angkar. He is fearsome because he is very handsome (according to his cook who sounds in love with him), always gentle and smiling. He is surprising because he is kind to his obviously mentally ill wife. He is fearsome because he believes completely in the teachings of Marx and Mao, and is willing to go to any length to realise his communist paradise - including killings of professors, doctors, writers and all the persons who have an education, and relocation of millions of city inhabitants to countryside so that they may learn the virtues of manual work and hunger. He is also most fearsome because he evokes obedience even from persons he has ordered to be killed. Even his cook who knows that she can never betray him, says that she would have been happy to be killed because "If Angkar has taken a decision, then he must be right".

I have never been to Cambodia, but I had heard many similar stories during my journeys in China and Vietnam in late 1980s and early 1990s.

Away from the cameras and the journalists, in their private lives, these mighty dictators were just little guys, missing the cooking of their mothers and their home towns, getting drunk, sometimes petty and sometimes generous, finding a refuge in their ideologies.

Conclusions

Sbzablowski's book does not make any new revelations but it gives a different point of view of seeing the infamous dictators of 20th century - persons who had made history and influenced their worlds. I felt sympathy for those cooks, who now try to hide behind ordinary lives, so that no one comes to look for them and to hold them responsible for those events, which took place when they were close to the powerful.

Some of them, who had met kings, queens and prime-ministers and had cooked for them, travelled around the world in private jets and Mercedes cars, are now living lives of poverty, usually ignored by most regarding their illustrious past.

I think that it is good book to read if you are interested in history and in humanity - it shows you how chance and destiny can shape a life and how power corrupts. It also shows that nothing lasts for ever and sooner or later, one day even the most powerful dictator would have to concede defeat.

*****

#bookreview #books #bibliophile #historybook #dictators

Searching for Dragon Bones

Recently our Book-Reading Group in Schio (Italy) decided to read Tracy Chevalier's book "Remarkable Creatures". It is the story of 2 women in early 19th century England and their love for fossils and old bones.

Reading this book reminded me of a visit to a museum in Bologna some years ago, as well as, of discussions about dinosaur bones in the Gobi desert in Mongolia. Friends had told me that in Mongolia and China, people used to believe that the dinosaur bones were dragon-bones, and were used as medicines by traditional healers.

This post is about Tracy Chevalier's book, as well as about discovery of fossils in medieval Bologna. It is a kind of a rambling post about how scientific discoveries are inter-connected and can change the way we see the world around us. Let me start with Chevalier's book.

Remarkable Creatures

Chevalier is a British author of American origins who writes historical novels. She became famous with her book "The girl with the pearl earring" in 1999 while "Remarkable Creatures" came out in 2009.

The book is set in the coastal town of Lyme Regis in south England. The tiny town of Lyme has been the backdrop of many books, including "Persuasion" by Jane Austen and "French Lieutenant's Woman" by John Fowles. It is a fiction-book based on real persons, who lived there in the 19th century. On her website, Chevalier provides the following background to her decision to write this book:

A few years ago I went with my son to a small dinosaur museum in Dorchester, on the south coast of England. Among the usual displays, there was a wall devoted to Mary Anning, who lived in the early 19th century in the nearby town of Lyme Regis, where fossils are abundant. The display showed a sketch of Mary on the beach, holding a hammer and wearing a top hat to protect her from falling rocks. At age 12 she discovered the first complete specimen of an ichthyosaur, a marine reptile about 200 million years old

The book starts with the friendship between the two women - the 12 years old Mary Anning from a working class family and a resigned-to-spinsterhood, Elisabeth Philpot. Mary searches for the fossils on the coast to sell them to the tourists. Elisabeth has been sent to live in Lyme, as her brother has decided to get married and his wife does not wish to share the house with his sisters. In Lyme, Elisabeth discovers her love for the fossils and old bones, and in the process, recognises the genius of Mary in finding them.

A dinosaur skeleton, now displayed in the Natural History museum in London, discovered by Mary Anning, plays a key role in the story. I love that museum and have been there a few times (2 of the images used in this post are from that museum). However, before reading this book, I had no idea about Mary Anning and the role she had played in discoveries of the dinosaur skeletons in England.

Book's Themes

The story is set in the early 19th century England, a period when class distinctions were still strong and the society did not accept friendships between persons of different classes. It was also a period when women were much lower in the hierarchy compared to the men - they did not have any independent rights and were dependent upon the men of their families for all decisions. It was a period when religious orthodoxy dominated and was hard to challenge.

It was a period of transition, where the finding of fossils was problematic as it raised issues for which the answers inevitably led to a questioning of religious dogmas. The Bible said that God had made the creation over a period of 6 days and all creatures made by God were perfect. The fossils and dinosaurs did not fit into this narrative because they implied that some creatures had existed in the past and had become extinct. The church negated these suppositions which did not fit the theory of creationism.

In that period, only men were supposed to be discoverers and scientists while women like Mary or Elisabeth were not supposed to be one. Thus, men interested in the fossils and old bones of giant animals (the word dinosaur had not yet been coined), took the knowledge and specimens from Mary and showed them off as their own finds. The book concludes as the first fissures apear in this male-dominated construction of the scientific world and Mary becomes known as the person who understands fossils much better than anyone else.

It is a gentle book, focusing on the social milieu as well as, on the inner lives of its female protagonists, and is very easy to read. There are parts of the story, like the man who had duped Mary suddenly discovers his noble side, which are a little unconvincing but overall the book is informative and enjoyable. Even Jane Austen makes a fleeting appearance in the story. For me, the most interesting parts of this book are those where the process of finding the fossils and the beginning of slow understanding about their origins are described.

Aldrovandi & Geology

Reading about fossils reminded me of a naturalist from medieval Bologna in Italy. In a recent article by Lawrence Wright in the New Yorker, Bologna is described as "the giant churches, the red-tiled roofs, the marble walkways under arched porticoes; a stately city, low-slung, amber hued, full of students and indomitable old couples. During the Middle Ages, Bologna was home to more than a hundred towers, the skyscrapers of their era, which served as show-places of wealth and ambition for powerful oligarchs. Two of the remaining ones have become symbols of Bologna: one slightly out of plumb, the other as cockeyed as its cousin in Pisa."

This article touches on the social transformations brought about by the pandemic of black death (plague) in the 14th century and proposes that the pandemic had led to the period of Italian Renaissance and to a new way of understanding the world. It asks what kind of the transformations will be stimulated by the present Covid-19 pandemic and in which ways those will shape our future world.

One of the key figures of 16th century Bologna who had contributed to the scientific transformation of Renaissance was the naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi. He was born in Bologna in 1522. Leonardo da Vinci had died a couple of years earlier while Michelangelo had yet to start painting the Sistine chapel. Thus, we were in the middle of Italian Renaissance period. It was also the time when the Spanish inquisition had already started and it was easy to be accused of being a heretic. In fact, Aldrovandi himself was imprisoned for about a year and a couple of decades after his death, in 1633 Galileo was sentenced to life-imprisonment for suggesting that the earth was not the centre of the universe and it revolved around the sun.

Aldrovandi had suggested that nature had to be looked at as "juxta propria principia", that is without religious or metaphysical conditioning. Among the objects collected by Aldrovandi were some seashells found in the mountain expeditions. This raised questions in his mind about how those sea creatures had reached the mountains? The Biblical justification to these findings was in the story of universal floods and Noah's ark. These made him think critically about the study of different layers of earth and how it was composed of different kinds of rocks and minerals. In his testament written in 1604, he used the word "geology" for the first time to indicate "the study of earth".

Some diaries of Leonardo da Vinci have also been found, where he had written about the finding of seashells and fish-fossils in the mountains. One of his hypothesis was that at some point in the earth's history, the mountains had been at the bottom of some sea. Thus, while Bible imposed certain beliefs regarding the creation of the world, and inquisition awaited persons who questioned those beliefs, persons already had other ideas, which contradicted Bible's idea of creationism.

Poggi museum of Bologna holds the Aldrovandi collection and includes the collection of "Diluvianum Museum" created in early 1700 by another local naturalist, Giuseppe Monti. It presented the fossils as part of the objects created by the Biblical floods (Diluvianum). The wall paintings of this room show those floods as imagined by the artists (an example in the image below).

Thus, it was not only Mary Anning and Elisabeth Philpot, but countless others including Androvandi and Monti, who had started to explore the world with new eyes and to question it, which had created the foundations which had led to Darwin's theory of evolution and forced the church to change its position on creationism. In "Strange Creatures", Elisabeth tentatively proposes that the "6 days of creation" of the Bible could have been 6 eras of creation.

Conclusions

Often, specific scientific ideas are associated with names of specific persons. For example, the theory of evolution is linked with the name of Charles Darwin. However, as this post shows, scientific advances do not come out of a vacuum, basic knowledge which contributes to them is the work of countless others who are not remembered by the history books.

So much of history and society is taken for granted. Like the discoveries of fossils, dinosaurs and the Darwin's theory of evolution - we accept all of these almost uncritically.

Art and literature can play an important role by reminding us how and in which conditions those discoveries took place and their human costs. That understanding helps us to look at the past in a more realistic way, so that we can understand better where we have reached and where we are going.

*****

#dinosaurs #tracychevalier #bookreview #remarkable_creatures

Poverty, Disease & Disability

The links between poverty, diseases and disabilities are well known. These links can work in complex ways. This post is about studies in Brazil showing how Zika virus infection in pregnant women combined with a neurotoxin in contaminated water in drought affected areas to increase the incidence of microcephaly (smalll, less developed brain cortex) in their newborn babies, leading to cognitive disabilities.

Understanding how different factors combine together to produce an effect is important since it helps us to look for specific solutions even while we work to remove systemic disparities linked with poverty.

Zika Infection in Brazil

Though Zika virus had already been identified in 2013, it suddenly burst out as an epidemic in Brazil in 2014. Over the following 2 years, the disease quickly spread to many other countries of the Americas and pacific. The disease is transmitted mainly through a mosquito (Aedes aegypti), and also by sexual contacts and blood transfusions. That same mosquito is also responsible for spread of other diseases like Dengue, Chikangunya and Yellow Fever. Initially it was thought that Zika infection did not cause any serious complications, till October 2015 when first reports of children born with microcephaly started coming among the pregnant women who had had Zika infection. Within a month, the number of children born with microcephaly had increased ten times. Many other newborn children had other neurological problems. Other complications of Zika included congenital malformations, and paralysis due to Guillain-Barre syndrome.

By early 2017, the number of new cases of Zika had started decreasing all over, even if different countries keep reporting occasional cases. For example, in 2018, Rajasthan in India had reported a Zika outbreak. Different aspects related to this infection remain unclear including the reasons which had led to its sudden and explosive growth in 2014-15.

Drought and Water Contamination in Brazil

The Zika epidemic had coincided with a period of drought in the north-east of Brazil. With lack of rains and evaporation of water, the concentration of salinity and minerals in the water-bodies had increased, creating favourable conditions for the growth of Cyanobacteria. These bacteria produce a chemical called Saxitoxin, which damages the nerve cells. Shell fish from the water-bodies in the drought areas had higher concentrations of Saxitoxin.

Zika and Saxitoxin

An article in June 2020 issue of The Scientist explains how Zika infection had combined with Saxitoxin to increase the number of newborn children having microcephaly. It says, "While the incidence of Zika was higher in other regions of Brazil, the number of children being born with microcephaly was higher in the north-east." Fortesting, researchers infected neural cell-cultures with Zika and then exposed them to low concentrations of Saxitoxin. They found that brain cells exposed to both Zika and Saxitoxin had 2.5 times more dead cells and three times higher number of Zika virus. This meant that Saxitoxin increased virus replication and worsened its impact on the brain cells. These findings were also confirmed in animal studies.

This research also underlined the links between poverty and disability. Poor persons with Zika infection were more exposed to drinking of contaminated water and thus were disproportionately hit by higher numbers of children with microcephaly and other congenital neurological defects leading to cognitive and intellectual disabilities.

Conclusions

This case-study shows that natural conditions such as droughts can change the risks of contamination. In such situations, policies such as privatisation of water resources lead to negative consequences which disproportionately affect the poor families. For example, drinking water from deep tubewells, has created similar risks by arsenic contamination of the ground water in Bangladesh and some parts of India, which also disproportionately affects the poor.

Case studies like this are important to understand the different ways in which diseases and other negative environmental conditions can combine and cause diseases and disabilities, especially among the poor.

*****

From Butchers to Surgeons

Recently I read Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris' 2017 book called "The Butchering Art". It is not a book for the faint-hearted. In this book, she describes the way surgery was done in England till late 19th century and how two discoveries - anaesthesia and antisepsis, revolutionised it. Before those discoveries, surgery was the domain of butchers.

Reading this book raised a question in my mind about surgery in ancient India. More than two thousand years ago, ancient Ayurvedic surgeons were doing different surgeries including full-thickness skin grafts and plastic surgery operations such as rhinoplasty. I have already written a blog post about it. The question in my mind was, how did ancient Indian surgeons resolve the problems of anaesthesia and prevention of bacterial infections during their surgery?

This post is about the Fitzharris' book, as well as, about ideas of anaesthesia and asepsis from the ancient Indian text of Sushrut Samhita.

The Butchering Art

Fitzharris has a vivid way of writing. She brings alive the old and forgotten world of surgery, before the discovery of anaesthesia. Her writing is so graphic, that at times it made me feel a bit queasy. Her book starts on a December day of 1846 and describes one of the first surgeries done under the effect of Ether anaesthesia at the London University College hospital. The surgeon was Robert Liston and on that day, as usual the operation room was full of spectators, who had paid a ticket to watch the show.

It was a time when surgery was reserved for desperate and life-saving situations. Surgeons operated on conscious persons, who had to be held on their place by a group of strongmen. The lucky ones lost consciousness and were thus spared the pain of their bodies being opened and their bones being sawed off. The most important quality of surgeons was their speed in finishing the operation.

In the middle of the room was a wooden table stained with the telltale signs of past butcheries. Underneath it, the floor was strewn with sawdust to soak up the blood that would shortly issue from the severed limb. On most days, the screams of those struggling under the knife mingled discordantly with everyday noises drifting in from the street below: children laughing, people chatting, carriages rumbling by. ...At six feet two, Liston was eight inches taller than the average British male. He had built his reputation on brute force and speed at a time when both were crucial to the survival of the patient. Those who came to witness an operation might miss it if they looked away even for a moment. It was said of Liston by his colleagues that when he amputated, “the gleam of his knife was followed so instantaneously by the sound of sawing as to make the two actions appear almost simultaneous.” His left arm was reportedly so strong that he could use it as a tourniquet, while he wielded the knife in his right hand. This was a feat that required immense strength and dexterity, given that patients often struggled against the fear and agony of the surgeon’s assault. Liston could remove a leg in less than thirty seconds, and in order to keep both hands free, he often clasped the bloody knife between his teeth while working.

It was also the time when people had no understanding about bacteria and infections. If the patients did not get the infection from the dirty hands, blood-soaked aprons and instruments of the surgeons working in crowded halls where people were sneezing, coughing and talking, they got it from others who were admitted in the crowded hospitals. Mortality due to post-operative infections was very high.

In the 1840s, operative surgery was a filthy business fraught with hidden dangers. It was to be avoided at all costs. Due to the risks, many surgeons refused to operate altogether, choosing instead to limit their scope to the treatment of external ailments like skin conditions and superficial wounds. ... The surgeon, wearing a blood-encrusted apron, rarely washed his hands or his instruments and carried with him into the theatre the unmistakable smell of rotting flesh, which those in the profession cheerfully referred to as “good old hospital stink.” ...At a time when surgeons believed pus was a natural part of the healing process rather than a sinister sign of sepsis, most deaths were due to postoperative infections. Operating theatres were gateways to death. It was safer to have an operation at home than in a hospital, where mortality rates were three to five times higher than they were in domestic settings.

The book starts with discovery of anaesthesia and then quickly moves to its main subject - the ideas of antisepsis and their impact. It tells the story of Joseph Lister and his ideas about prevention of infections during surgery. During 1850s, Louis Pasteur in Paris had come up with the theory of invisible germs which were responsible for souring milk and fermenting grape-juice for making wine. In 1862 he boiled milk, which prevented souring of milk and proved his theory. Lister, who was passionate about microscopes, heard about Pasteur's work and felt that similar microscopic germs were responsible for causing infections in patients during surgery. In 1865 he developed his antiseptic solution based on carbolic acid, and showed that it was possible to reduce the post-operative mortality due to infections.

The book starts with discovery of anaesthesia and then quickly moves to its main subject - the ideas  of antisepsis and their impact. It tells the story of Joseph Lister and his ideas about prevention of infections during surgery. During 1850s, Louis Pasteur in Paris had come up with the theory of invisible germs which were responsible for souring milk and fermenting grape-juice for making wine. In 1862 he boiled milk, which prevented souring of milk and proved his theory. Lister, who was passionate about microscopes, heard about Pasteur's work and felt that similar microscopic germs were responsible for causing infections in patients during surgery. In 1865 he developed his antiseptic solution based on carbolic acid, and showed that it was possible to reduce the post-operative mortality due to infections.

The book is a fascinating read. Even if Lister proved the importance of antisepsis in preventing infections, for a long time, surgeons were sceptical about his ideas. Lister was helped by others who helped in spreading his ideas. He had inspired the maker of Listerine , which is now known as a mouth-wash but was initially developed as a disinfectant in operation theatres and used for cleaning wounds. He had also inspired Robert Wood Johnson , who had started Johnson & Johnson company to make sterilised dressings and sutures. It was not until 1877, when Armour Hansen saw the leprosy bacillus under a microscope, identified it as the cause of leprosy and firmly established the germs theory of infections.

Surgery in Ancient India

Sushruta is considered as the father of shalya-chikitsa (surgery) in Ayurveda. Various modern text books on surgery and plastic- surgery acknowledge that some of the techniques described in his treatise "Sushruta Samhita", such as that of full-thickness skin graft and rhinoplasty, have inspired them and are still used. When I read the Fitzharris' book, I wondered how did the ancient Indians develop those surgical skills without modern anaesthesia and antisepsis? To make a full-thickness skin graft or to do rhinoplasty, the surgeons need patients who are calm and can lie still for some time. It was not a work that a person with brute force could do by cutting away a part of the body while others held the patient. Such delicate surgeries would have been wasted if there were post-operative infections. So how did ancient Indian surgeons such as Sushruta do those surgeries?

I searched on internet and found an English translation of the first volume of Sushruta Samhita - it was translated from Sanskrit by an Ayurvedic doctor called Kaviraj Kunjalal Bhishagratna in 1907. In the introduction to the volume, he explained that this was not the original text of Samhita written by Sushruta, rather it was a commented version written by a person called Nagarjuna and was probably written around 3rd or 4th century BCE.

I found some answers regarding the questions of anaesthesia and use of anti-sepsis in surgery in the introduction of this text:

Verses about medicine, hygiene and surgery lie scattered through out the four Vedas. ... There were 5 groups [of healers] - Rogaharas (physicians), Shalyaharas (surgeons), Vishaharas (poison curers), Krityaharas (demon doctors) and Bhisag-Atharvans (magic doctors). (p. 13)[Sushruta] first classified all surgical operations into different kinds ... Aharya (extraction of solid bodies), Bhedya (excising), Chhedya (incising), Eshya (probing), Sivya (suturing), Vedhya (punturing), and Visravanya (evacuating liquids). ... Sushruta enjoins the sick room to be fumigated with the vapours of white mustard, bdellium, nimva leaves and resinous gums of Shala trees, which foreshadows the antiseptic (bacilli) theory of modern times. (p. 16)Amputations were freely made and medicated wines were given to patients as anaesthetics. ... In those old days, perhaps there were no hospitals to huddle patients together in the same room and thereby to create artificially septicemic poisons which are now so common and so fatal in the lying-in rooms. A newly built lying-in room in an open space filled with the rays of the sun and the heat of burning fire, and for each individual case the recommendation of a fresh bamboo chip for the section of the [umblical] cord are suggestions the value of which, the west has yet to learn from the east. (p. 19-20)

This brief description shows that in many ways, Ayurvedic surgeons had found solutions to the problems of sepsis and anaesthesia, which had plagued the surgeons in the UK till 19th century. Use of fumigation, sun light, keeping persons separated, using a new and clean cutting instrument, are all ideas that are known to promote antisepsis. Use of medicated wines for anaesthesia needs to be understood better to see which kind of medications were used. My knowledge of Sanskrit is limited but probably there would be more detailed information in the texts of Sushruta Samhita, which can give us more precise answers.

Those understandings of ancient healers like Sushruta were probably based on centuries of observations and experiments, though they had no real understanding of different kinds of bacteria and infectious agents as there were no microscopes to directly observe the micro-organisms. As the quote about different kinds of healers shows, the world of ancient healers was also a world of magic and demons, and thus it is likely that many of the old ideas would be expressed in "unscientific" terms.

Challenges of Understanding Ancient Wisdom

I think that at least some of such ancient understandings were common heritage of humanity and not just limited to India. In large parts of the world such ancient knowledge has been lost because many of the old traditions, along with old gods and their myths were discarded, before they could be codified, written down and preserved for posterity. It is easy to discredit ancient experiential knowledge because it is expressed in unscientific terms and is associated with old myths and ideas of supernatural. In India, in spite of invasions and mixing of cultures, fortunately there has been a civilisational continuity and thus the traditional knowledge in the old texts has been kept alive, and even today Ayurveda is a living tradition, followed by millions of persons.

Unfortunately, there is a tendency in India to diminish the importance of Ayurveda and its knowledge, as explained so eloquently in a recent article by Madhulika Banerjee, where she has written:

... my research has shown me several other worlds of Ayurveda — the world of the practising Ayurvedic doctor, the teachers in the scores of colleges and universities of Ayurveda and researchers in different institutes. These worlds are much bigger and deeper, beyond that of Patanjali, Dabur and Himalaya. That world is vibrant, has integrity and it is important that it be known, respected and valued. ... Under the influence of colonialism, we tethered the language, the institutions and the systems of Ayurvedic knowledge production to the margins of our learning and education. We closed many doors and windows of scientific practices within and around traditional medical systems. But in a trick of inversion, we say they do not follow the language and methodology of science.Despite Ayurvedic knowledge being rooted in a different philosophy, teachers have found ways of keeping up the process of adapting learning from the texts to contemporary education, fitting into modern classifications of anatomy, physiology and higher specialisations at a deeper level. They have both adapted to and adopted new knowledge, widening their horizons unhesitatingly, true to their tradition. Yet they have to face unhappy students, struggling with low self-esteem, under immense pressure to compromise their knowledge.... When two knowledge traditions have two completely different perspectives on body and disease, then why compete on the medicine and cure? And when parameters of treatment and expected outcomes are of different kinds, then how can the protocols of biomedicine be used for evaluating Ayurvedic medicines? Why can Ayurvedic manufacturing not focus on creating a different world of diagnosis, treatment and cure in keeping with its perspective, expanding the range of choices patients have?
I feel that the last part of Banerjee's quote above is fundamental - the value of the knowledge in Ayurveda can not be and should not be limited to evaluations by "scientists", it also needs to be understood and judged according to its own perspectives. For example, words like dosha, pitta, kapha and vayu, which are fundamental to ideas of Ayurveda, represent complex ideas that can not be translated into illness, bile, mucous and air and then laughed at, because they do not fit our understandings as modern doctors.

As explained in my blog-post on Ganesha story and ancient Ayurvedic techniques of plastic surgery operations on the nose (rhinoplasty), these were copied by British surgeons from India fairly recently (during the last part of 18th century). Yet, that does not stop "modern" doctors from calling Ayurveda as "alternative" medicine or worse, implying that these are inferior knowledge systems, if not outright quackery.

Conclusions

Linda Fitzharris' book on the old surgical art of butchering provides a glimpse into that time when getting a tooth extraction or having an abscess incised could lead to sepsis and death. It was also a time of unimaginable pain as persons were immobilised while the surgeons amputated their limbs or did similar operations. Discovery of anaesthetics and an understanding of spread of infections has led to the world today, where we have advances like laproscopic surgery, laser surgery and robots which can do delicate operations.

Forty years ago, when I had studied medicine, I had learned how to use ether anaesthesia for work in rural hospitals which did not have access to a Boyle's machine for anaesthesia. It was still the same technology which Fitzharris has described in her book as taking place in 1846. I don't know if anywhere anyone still uses that primitive approach to anaesthesia! So in way, I could directly identify with that world and feel the horrors of having brutal surgeries without anaesthesia.

It was also enlightening to read the book about Sushruta's techniques of surgery more than 2,500 years ago and appreciate how he and other ancient healers in India had developed an understanding about both anaesthesia and asepsis and were able to conduct and develop complex surgical techniques and to find that some of these techniques were copied in the west fairly recently (in 18th century).

I don't think that Ayurveda and ancient texts like Sushruta Samhita would all make sense according to the modern scientific understandings. They are texts of their times and they would have their parts of myths, stories and fantasies, interspersed with real experiential knowledge. As my brief exposition above shows, they did develop understandings which the modern medicine has developed only relatively recently. They do merit respectful analysis, even when we can't understand their meanings.

End-Note: The images used with this post are from the old anatomy theatre of Bologna in Italy and from an Ayurvedic college in Kerala, India.

*****

#bookreview #surgery #historyofsurgery #ayurvedicsurgery #ayurveda #lindseyfitzharris