{"id":198,"date":"2024-11-04T10:29:06","date_gmt":"2024-11-04T10:29:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.museoottaviobadessa.it\/history\/"},"modified":"2026-06-01T13:55:25","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T13:55:25","slug":"history","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.museoottaviobadessa.it\/en\/history\/","title":{"rendered":"The Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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This museum is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Ottavio Badessa.Born in 1898 in Bauso, present-day Villafranca Tirrena<\/strong>, he graduated in Medicine in Naples and then attended the Obstetric Clinic of the University of Messina, serving for approximately thirty years as the local physician of Villafranca Tirrena. A respected and well-known professional, he carried out his work with technique and expertise that were highly advanced for the time and environment in which he operated, always showing extraordinary attention to the human aspect and living conditions of each patient. We remember him making house calls to the sick, traveling tirelessly in his carriage, which, for this very reason, has been chosen as the symbol of the museum. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

All the objects on display come from the private collection of his son, Dr. Paolo Badessa, former head of Anesthesia and Resuscitation at the hospitals of Solleftea (Sweden), Niscemi (Caltanissetta), and Patti (Messina).The museum displays numerous medical instruments, in perfect working order, of every kind and specialty, collected with passion for over forty years in many Western countries.In memory of the medical work carried out by his father, Dr. Ottavio Badessa, the collection was donated to the city of Villafranca Tirrena to be exhibited in a museum open to all for the benefit of citizens, visitors, and enthusiasts.<\/p>\n\n

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The Museum Logo<\/h3>\n\n
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The museum logo features a carriage<\/strong>, which is somewhat of a symbol of the General Practitioner worldwide. In an American town, in fact, a bronze monument to the G.P. (the equivalent of the local physician) was created, consisting of a carriage with a hood and a horse. Dr. Ottavio Badessa would make house calls in his carriage with a light blue hood and the coachman who drove it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Medicine in the Ancient World<\/h3>\n\n

Ancient civilizations developed conditions that were both favorable and adverse to the progress of medicine. The Aztecs inherited an enormous wealth of knowledge from their earlier cultures. Their obsidian knives were as sharp as modern scalpels, the concept of hygiene and cleanliness was very advanced, and their superficial operations had a greater chance of success than those conducted in Europe until the 19th century. On the other hand, pre-Columbian cultures placed little value on human life and, consequently, on the medical profession. The lack of scientific method was partly compensated for by a deep knowledge of natural remedies and medicines, passed down orally. <\/p>\n\n

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Plants have always been studied to obtain, through careful preparation, medicines for internal and external use. Here are some examples: Asian hemp was already known as a narcotic, juniper as a diuretic and disinfectant, wine produced from grapes was used as a general anesthetic, aconite for treating rheumatism and fevers, opium poppy as a painkiller and anesthetic, and mint for treating digestive disorders and as an anti-inflammatory. The list could go on. It is surprising to see how ancient civilizations, such as the Hindu civilization, had reached a high degree of specialization in creating surgical instruments for operations such as lithotomy and skin grafts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Greek civilization, in addition to reaching unsurpassed heights in art, literature, and philosophy, effectively introduced the figure of the physician, devoted to the god Asclepius. A key and symbolic figure of the new Greek medicine was Hippocrates (who lived between the 5th and 4th centuries BC), of whom we quote a significant aphorism: “What medicines cannot cure, the scalpel cures; what the scalpel cannot cure, cautery cures; what cannot be cured with cautery is incurable.” Hippocrates represented the birth of a medicine free from theurgic and philosophical presuppositions, based on observation and method. <\/p>\n\n

Medicine in the Middle Ages<\/h3>\n\n

Along with Hippocrates, Galen is considered the father of ancient medicine. His doctrines dominated medical science in Europe, for better or worse, for over fifteen hundred years. In the Middle Ages, his work was venerated to the point that any differing opinion was considered heresy. Therefore, along with his advanced insights, some spectacularly incorrect theories were passed down as indisputable, for example on the functioning of the digestive system, and on the anatomy of the brain and heart. <\/p>\n\n

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The Christian Middle Ages, alongside the spread of monastic orders, saw the birth of the first hospitals, where religious provided assistance and hospitality to people in need of care. Often the need to isolate patients considered sources of contagion prevailed over therapeutic aspects, and thus places of confinement such as leper colonies or lazarettos (from the patron Saint Lazarus) originated. It is worth remembering that, in the same era as European hospitals, in the Arab world (in Cordoba, Cairo, Baghdad) there were already hospitals organized with wards divided according to the type of pathology, outpatient clinics for external patients, a kitchen inspired by dietary principles, and long-term care wards. In the medieval Christian world, illness was considered a punishment from heaven and treatment was, to say the least, nihilistic. Medicine was practiced exclusively by religious figures, lacking the most basic notions of human anatomy and physiology. Autopsy on human beings, prohibited in imperial Rome, was associated with witchcraft practices throughout the Middle Ages. One must wait until 1376 to find an edict by the Duke of Anjou that allowed students at the University of Montpellier to perform one dissection on a cadaver per year (!). The first pope to authorize autopsies was Sixtus IV (1414-84), who had been a student at the universities of Padua and Bologna. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In the Renaissance, an enormous impetus to medical science came from renewed interest in anatomical studies, made famous by the works of artists such as Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Albrecht D\u00fcrer. Of fundamental importance was the work of the Belgian Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564), who described the real structure of the human body, the shape and interaction of organs. <\/p>\n\n

Medicine in the Modern Era<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n

The first well-documented abdominal operation was a laparotomy performed without anesthesia in 1549 by Viennese surgeons. The operation saved the life of a woman who had had an ectopic pregnancy. The first cholecystectomy on record dates back to 1882 and was performed by Carl Langenbuch on a 43-year-old man suffering from biliary colic. The first gallbladder removal was performed in England in 1884. The first documented appendectomy dates back to 1885. <\/p>\n\n

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“The dream has become reality: today it is possible to perform operations without pain”! This is a famous phrase uttered by surgeon Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach (1794-1847), who was the first to experiment with ether in Europe. The only significant analgesics used in antiquity and the Middle Ages (mainly in Arab medicine) were hashish, mandrake, and opium. For the introduction of ether and chloroform, one must wait until the second half of the 19th century. Bacteriology has its pioneer and symbol in the French physician Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), a scholar of fermentation processes, “inventor” of pasteurization, a process that bears his name, researcher and discoverer of the rabies vaccine. At the same time, Berlin professor Robert Koch (1843-1910) identified the bacilli of tuberculosis and cholera and experimented with new methods for cultivating bacteria. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Prof. Theodor Billroth, who operated in an advanced hospital facility in Vienna, is considered a father of modern surgery for his openness to new anesthesia techniques and for his tireless activity in employing every precaution in the field of antisepsis (defense against bacteria) and asepsis (elimination of bacteria). To appreciate the importance of Billroth’s figure, it is worth remembering that at the end of the 19th century, English and American surgeons used the same gowns and gloves multiple times (often cotton, more rarely rubber!). <\/p>\n\n

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Explore the collections<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This museum is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Ottavio Badessa. Born in 1898 in Bauso, present-day Villafranca Tirrena, he graduated in Medicine in Naples and then attended the Obstetric Clinic of the University of Messina, serving for approximately thirty years as the local physician of Villafranca Tirrena. A respected and well-known professional, he carried […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":444,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_speechable_audio":"","_speechable_word_timings":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-198","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.museoottaviobadessa.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.museoottaviobadessa.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.museoottaviobadessa.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museoottaviobadessa.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museoottaviobadessa.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.museoottaviobadessa.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":484,"href":"https:\/\/www.museoottaviobadessa.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/198\/revisions\/484"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museoottaviobadessa.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.museoottaviobadessa.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}