Paolo Mantegazza facts for kids
Paolo Mantegazza (Italian pronunciation: [ˈpaːolo manteˈɡattsa]; 31 October 1831 – 28 August 1910) was an Italian neurologist, physiologist, and anthropologist, noted for his experimental investigation of coca leaves into its effects on the human psyche. He was also an author of fiction.
Life
Mantegazza was born in Monza on 31 October 1831. After spending his student days at the universities of Pisa and Milan, he gained his M.D. degree at Pavia in 1854. After travelling in Europe, India and the Americas, he practised as a doctor in the Argentine Republic and Paraguay. Returning to Italy in 1858 he was appointed surgeon at Milan Hospital and professor of general pathology at Pavia. In 1870, he was nominated professor of anthropology at the Istituto di Studi Superiori, Florence. Here, he founded the first Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology in Italy, and later the Italian Anthropological Society.
From 1865 until 1876, he was deputy for Monza in the Parliament of Italy, being elected subsequently to the Italian Senate. He became the object of fierce attacks because of the extent to which he practised vivisection.
During a time when the popular and official science and culture in Italy were still influenced by the Roman Catholic Church, Mantegazza was a staunch liberal and defended the ideas of Darwinism in anthropology, his research having helped to establish it as the "natural history of man". From 1868 to 1875 he maintained a correspondence with Charles Darwin, too.
Mantegazza's natural history, however, must be considered to be from a racial or social Darwinist perspective, evident in his Morphological Tree of Human Races. This tree maps three principles: a single European meta-narrative controls all of the world's many cultures; human history is imagined as progressive, with the European human as the pinnacle of progress and development; lastly, a ranking of different races onto a hierarchical structure. If one envisions a tree, the Aryan race is the topmost branch, followed by Polynesians, Semites, Japanese, and moving downward to the bottom-most branch, the "Negritos." Mantegazza also designed an "Aesthetic Tree of the Human Race" with similar results.
..... When Mantegazza returned from South America, where he had witnessed the use of coca by the natives, he was able to chew a regular amount of coca leaves and then tested on himself in 1859. Afterward, he wrote a paper titled Sulle Virtù Igieniche e Medicinali della Coca e sugli Alimenti Nervosi in Generale ("On the hygienic and medicinal properties of coca and on nervous nourishment in general"). ..... I would rather have a life span of ten years with coca than one of 10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 centuries without coca."
Mantegazza died at San Terenzo (La Spezia) on 28 August 1910.
Works
Mantegazza's published works also included:
- Fisiologia del Dolore (Physiology of Pain, 1880);
- Fisiologia dell'Amore (Physiology of Love, 1896);
- Elementi d'igiene (Elements of Hygiene, 1875);
- Fisonomia e Mimica (Physiognomy and Mimics, 1883);
- Fisiologia dell'odio, (Physiology of Hate, 1889);
- Fisiologia della Donna (Physiology of Women, 1893).
His advanced philosophical and social views were published in a 1,200-page volume in 1871, titled Quadri della Natura Umana. Feste ed Ebbrezze ("Pictures of Human Nature. Feasts and Inebriations"). Many consider this opus his masterpiece.
As a fiction writer, Mantegazza was very original. He wrote a romance on the marriage between people with disease, Un Giorno a Madera (1876), which made quite a sensation. Less well known is his science fiction and futuristic romance L'Anno 3000 (The Year 3000, written in 1897).
He also wrote the novel Testa ("Head", 1887), a sequel of renowned book Heart, by his friend Edmondo de Amicis. The novel tells the story of Enrico in his teenager years.
See also
In Spanish: Paolo Mantegazza para niños
