L'oggetto che si presenta in questo contributo costituisce un'integrazione al corpus relativamente poco cospicuo di orologi solari miniaturistici greco-romani. Si tratta di una meridiana conica in avorio di elefante, rinvenuta in giacitura secondaria all'interno di un contesto residenziale di età augustea nella Piazza del Duomo di Pisa. Al di là dell'unicità dell'esemplare, per il quale si fornisce un accurato studio gnomonico, unitamente a un approfondito apprezzamento dei relativi aspetti culturali, sociali e tipologici, tale scoperta contribuisce a meglio definire il livello sociale di quest'area della città tra il II e il I sec. a.C.

The article provides the first description and analysis of the recently rediscovered manuscript titled Methodus anatomica by Girolamo Fabrici da Acquapendente (1533–1619). Acquapendente was one of the most important anatomists in late sixteenth-century Europe and played an instrumental role as Harvey’s teacher in Padua towards the latter’s discovery of the circulation of the blood. The manuscript provides first-hand testimony as to how anatomy was administered in Padua in the post-Vesalian era and sheds light on a number of otherwise unknown aspects of the development of the anatomical method. Chiefly among these is the attention devoted by Acquapendente to historia, as a way to order sensory data in a consistent way, which draws widely from the geometrical method and from the contemporary debate on the discretisation of continuous quantities.

Kyle Harper's article on the “Plague of Cyprian” that appeared in this journal in 2015 constitutes the only comprehensive study to date of this important disease outbreak in the third quarter of the 3rd c. CE. The current article revisits the main evidence for this epidemic and corrects and improves our understanding of its origin, timeline, and spread. It contends that the disease entered the Roman Empire via Gothic invasions on the Danube rather than traveling up the Nile from inner Africa. It further argues that the disease reached the Roman Empire only after the death of Decius and cannot be connected with the latter's edict commanding sacrifices to the Roman gods, issued in 249 CE. While the pestilence indubitably exacerbated the political and military crisis of the third quarter of the 3rd c. CE, it should probably not be considered as the root of the crisis itself, as Harper has suggested.

Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, registering and regulating the training of any medical practitioners in Britain had rarely been attempted, unlike in many other European countries. During the Revolutionary War with France, fevers swept through British armies, leading to numerous fatalities and crushing military defeats, especially in the disastrous expedition to St Domingo. The problem, as forcibly advocated by Robert Jackson, the leading expert on military fevers, seemed to be poor medical care due to both lack of compulsory medical training and the unsuitability of whatever training was available for army medical practitioners. With the simultaneous rapid advance of French military and civilian medical training and the threat of a French invasion, regulating British medical training and excluding the unqualified became a military necessity, and suddenly medical reform was receiving widespread attention. Emphasising the benefits to the Britain’s fighting ability, the reform effort, led by Edward Harrison, a very provincial Lincolnshire physician, under the patronage of Sir Joseph Banks, the President of the Royal Society, gained the support of leading politicians, including three Prime Ministers. For a short time, comprehensive medical reform seemed inevitable: but the opposition of the medical corporations, especially the London College of Physicians, could not be circumvented, and although Harrison persisted in his efforts for 6 years, no legislation was achieved. Nevertheless, within months, the Association of Apothecaries continued the process by pressing for a more limited reform, culminating in the 1815 Apothecaries Act. The long march towards the full regulation of doctors in Britain was started by the perceived military needs of the country during the war with France.

A non-violent position drawn from the Anabaptist tradition (‘two-kingdom dualism’) is contrasted with the Christian pacifism with which that position is commonly conflated. It is argued that two-kingdom dualism more effectively leverages the philosophical and practical features of its particularly Christian character than does Christian pacifism – and that these features may have implications beyond the philosophy of religion.

This essay demonstrates that it is impossible to appreciate the actions of the Italian communist Emilio Sereni without considering his Zionist background. Anyone who is interested in understanding the complexities of communism in the past century and to avoid simplistic conclusions about this ideology will benefit from the study. The problem at stake is that researchers often approach communism in a monolithic manner, which does not adequately explain the multiform manifestations (practical and theoretical) of that phenomenon. This ought to change and to this extent this essay hopes to contribute to that recent strand of historical research that challenges simplistic views on communism. More specifically, by analysing the Management Councils that Sereni created in postwar Italy, we can see that many of their features in fact derived from, or found their deepest origins in, his previous experience as a committed socialist Zionist. The study, then, also relates Sereni to and looks at the broader experiences of early twentieth-century Zionism and Italian communism in the early postwar years.