Osservazione di due lucertole acquatiche, o salamandre, uscite dal basso ventre di un fanciullo di Tortona ANINO, Casimiro

VERY SCARCE MEDICAL REPORT ON THE REMARKABLE CASE OF A 10-YEAR-OLD CHILD WHO DIED SOON AFTER "EVACUATING" TWO SALAMANDERS FROM HIS BOWELS. ILLUSTRATED WITH A BEAUTIFUL HAND-COLOURED FOLD-OUT ENGRAVED PLATE. APPARENTLY, NO COPIES IN NORTH AMERICA (OCLC). ANINO, Casimiro. Osservazione di due lucertole acquatiche, o salamandre, uscite dal basso ventre di un fanciullo di Tortona. Turin, Nella Stamperia Reale, 1762. FIRST and ONLY EDITION. 4to, 26 pp. and a final folding engraved plate of 2 salamanders; woodcut device on title, head-piece and initial. Slightly later plain dark-blue paper wrapper. Nice clean wide-margined copy. RARE. A curious and very rare medical work written by the surgeon Casimiro Anino, a native of Livorno Vercellese and medical professor at the University of Turin, which reports on the remarkable case of Giambattista Vaudano, a ten-year-old boy from Tortona, who due to the intense heat drank the turbid water of a stream, the Ossona, in August 1762. He soon began to suffer severe abdominal pains that led to his death, having previously evacuated/discharged two small animals from the bowels, later identified as "water lizards or salamanders." The author concluded that the boy had either ingested salamander spawn or, alternatively, had swallowed two young salamanders, which then grew to maturity in his stomach. "[TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL ITALIAN] Among the various and almost innumerable ailments to which the human body is subject, that which most often afflicts children, and even the youngest children, is rightly believed to be that which has its origin in certain kinds of insects, and principally in worms, caterpillars, or earthworms, which nest, grow, and multiply more or less in various cavities, but very often in the ventricle and in the intestine." (p.3) (Tra le varie, e pressochè innumerabili infermità, alle quali l'uman corpo soggiace, quella, che il più delle volte affligge i fanciulli, e gli stessi bambini più teneri, ben a ragione si annovera, che trae l'origine da certa sorta d'insetti, e principalmente da vermi, bacchi, o sia lumbrici, li quali si annidano, crescono, ed or più, ed or meno si van moltiplicando nelle varie cavità, ma ben sovente nel ventricolo, e nelle intestina). REFERENCES: - De Gregori, Istoria della vercellese letteratura ed arti, vol. IV, p. 78. - Robson, Bibliotheca Paitoniana, p. 149. - Annali della Fondazione Luigi Einaudi, vol. 34, p. 341. - Bibliothèque Huzard, p. 297.