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DANTE’s Medical Knowledge: The Case of INFERNO, Canto XXX
Department of Internal Medicine, ASST Nord Milano, Milan, Italy
- 1 Department of Internal Medicine, ASST Nord Milano, Milan, Italy
Advances in Historical Studies·Volume 07 (2018)·Pages 15–21·Published 15 March 2018·DOI10.4236/ahs.2018.71002
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Abstract
The Divine Comedy , by Dante Alighieri, describes an imaginative journey in afterlife. In Hell, canto XXX, Dante meets the falsifiers and sees a man who has the shape of a lute, a rotting face, and an abdomen bloated by “dropsy”. This horribly deformed sinner is Master Adam, who counterfeited Florentine money, and for this crime was burned at the stake. Previous critics had ascribed Master Adam’s punishment to various real or imaginary diseases, but an alternative possibility is that it may represent one of the most ancient, yet accurate, descriptions of tense ascites in the literature.
KeywordsDante AlighieriHepatic CirrhosisAscitesHistory of Medicine
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