Are you afraid of needles?
In this medical-surgical memoir, published for the first time in 1829, Giuseppe Ferrario tells the disturbing story of a girl suffering from epilepsy from whose body, in 332 days of treatment at the hospital in Milan, over three hundred sewing needles were extracted. One of the most incredible events in the history of Italian medicine of the early nineteenth century, between superstition, magic, popular religiosity, scientific research and ambiguous medical practices. In a pressing story, Giuseppe Ferrario goes beyond the mere surgical report trying to dig into the psychology of the patient and to find with the rigor of the scientist the reason for such a bizarre and apparent inexplicable behavior: how is it possible that needles continue to come out of a human body? Who introduced them? With what reasons? Avoid in case of belonephobia.
A quote from the book:
"the general convulsions of the macilente woman, the aneloso breathing, threatening suffocation, the floppy and cluttered breasts that I extolled for the shirt made in pieces; the violence with which he rotated his head around his neck, and with which he debated it almost against the wall and drove it dangling from the banks of the bed; the red-turgid eyes, now overwhelmed, now wide open, prominent from the orbit, fixed and satiating; the repulsive grinding of teeth, the frothy matter dyed with blood that vomited spraying from the filthy jaws, the horribly counterfeit swollen face, the black hair that clumped and soaked in drool stretch shook around the skull, and reversed fell on his face [...] Everything inspired the maximum horror and terror, presenting alive the fatal image of a hellish fury".
The edition includes the original panel depicting the woman with the needles.
Graphic and editorial project: ex umbris
Print: BDprint
Features of the edition: paperback sewn thread refe; internal paper: Favini Aralda; cover paper: Fedrigoni Tintoretto marked
Pages: 160
Dimensions: 110x165
Original edition: The woman with the needles. Memoria di Giuseppe Ferrario, Giacomo Pirola, Milan 1829