Erysipelas over the centuries: notes from the history of popes

Alessio Spalla, court surgeon of Christina of Sweden and his unknown Queen's autopsy report

BACKGROUND

Queen Christina of Sweden, a prominent Early Modern European character, died in Rome on April 19th, 1689. The scarce literature published about her illness and death agrees about the cause of the death in the diagnosis of erysipelas, that did not appear externally with an ulcer, but became manifest in her blood, causing an inflammation of heart and lungs. The article underlines the essential contribution of the learned surgeons to the development of practical anatomy in the late Seventeenth century as illustrated by the specific case of the Queen's autopsy report by the court surgeon Alessio Spalla.

METHODS

The study is based on the analysis of the published literature and the comparison of archival sources as the anonymous report of the Queen's autopsy, preserved in Vienna and the unknown autopsy by Spalla, discovered in a private archive.

RESULTS

The comparison of Spalla's autopsy with the Viennese report of an anonymous practical doctor -suspected to be Marcello Malpighi-, who also participated in the Queen's dissection highlights how the two perspectives of investigation - the surgical-morphological and the medical-practical ones - are integrated in the theoretical and practical dimension of practical anatomy.

CONCLUSIONS

The unpublished report of the surgeon Spalla integrates the knowledge of the queen's illness and death, stands as an example of a private autopsy performed by a court surgeon in the late Seventeenth-century Rome and as a case study on the development of new hybrid areas of knowledge, such as practical anatomy.