I’m off to visit a medical museum called the Museo delle Arti Sanitarie in the Complesso Monumentale Santa Maria del Popolo degli Incurabili. Big long names. It’s a complex of historic buildings, including a hospital founded in 1521. Naples has funded restoration of the complex, much of it in progress. As with most everything in Naples, it takes some effort to get there. It’s up on a hill in an area that looks to be in ruins.
A very large iron gate blocks entry, but the friendly guard, Massimo, lets me in after calling the museum to make sure it’s all right. He has a striking tattoo on the left side of his neck, but I thought better of asking for a specific pose. Massimo is happy to show off his English.
Massimo warned me that taking photos was forbidden everywhere, inside and out, but I grabbed this image when I was beyond his view.
Inside there is no problem taking photos. A docent takes a few of us visitors through the museum. This contraption allowed physicians to apply pressure on the patient’s organs to possibly cause a resuscitation.
The hospital was built in the 1520s by order of the noblewoman Maria Longo, to give healthcare to the poor, including the many syphilis sufferers of the time. The museum displays bottles and busts of horrific medical conditions once used for research. Bodies of the poor without family who died in the hospital were dissected for research purposes.
Unfortunately, the historic Pharmacy of the Incurables is closed for restoration, however many rooms are open, including this laboratory that was actually used into the 1950s.
The museum has rooms devoted to specialties, including dentistry. This image shows what might have been thought in the 1780s to cause a tooth ache.
Restoration work makes it impossible to find the “well of the madmen”, into which agitated people were lowered to calm them down. In this heat, water will soothe agitation for sure.
Since I have some time before the start of the walking tour I have arranged for the afternoon, I decide to head to the Botanical Garden. I pass through residential neighborhoods that seem a little more subdued than those in the historic center. There’s such a sense of community in Naples, with each little neighborhood hanging banners and flags.
I come across private shrines that memorialize neighbors now gone. There seems to be at least one of these on every block.
Walking in the Botanical Garden, I veer near the sprinklers to get some spray and relief from the heat.
Thankfully, not all the paths are under the sun.
The Botanical Garden happens to be showing some land art. I talk to one young artist about her work, a structure made of grasses and bamboo. She’s not able to describe her intent other than to take up space in the garden, but maybe I’m not asking the right questions or understanding her answers.
I walk up toward what’s called the Castle on the map of the gardens. There I should find a botanical museum but, like so many places in Naples, it is closed for maintenance and restoration.
Another building devoted to herbaria has been taken over by a digital marketing conference. I head back to the coffee bar, the meeting place for the walking tour of Naples traditional food sites. I have eaten little all day in anticipation of the tastings on the walk.