Sudden death : medicine and religion in eighteenth-century Rome / by Maria Pia Donato ; translated by Valentina Mazzei.

Morti improvvise. English

Farnham, Surrey ; Burlington, VT : Ashgate, [2014]

vi, 229 pages ; 24 cm.

Translation of: Morti improvvise / Maria Pia Donato. Roma : Carocci, c2010.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Sudden death and the physician's role in society -- Fears -- The medico-legal enquiry on sudden death, or, the truth of the body -- And the public role of physicians -- From the dead to the living: medicine and public health in the early eighteenth century -- Sudden death in medical theory and practice -- A new stance on death: the mechanical medicine of Lancisi's De subitaneis mortibus -- The pathological gaze. The problematic status of post-mortem evidence -- In early eighteenth-century medicine -- The lost and the saved. Sudden death as an ethical and religious issue -- Death and the doctors. Scientific queries and ethical dilemmas -- In the hour of death -- Looking for a heavenly protector: Saint Andrew Avellino, the "apoplectic saint."