DANTE'S INFERNO, canto XXX: Imaginary or real liver disease?

Abstract

This image (Figure 1) shows a glimpse of Hell (Divine Comedy), when Dante Alighieri encounters Master Adam (who, having counterfeited the Florentine money, was burned at the stake in Florence in 1281), and Sinon (who tricked the Trojans with the wooden horse filled with Achaean warriors). Master Adam, an Englishman (magistro Adam de Anglia) (1) has the shape of a lute, a rotting face, and an abdomen bloated by a disease called ‘dropsy’ (“…And one I saw, who like a lute were shaped / if he had only had his groin cut off / down in the region where a man is forked / The heavy dropsy which unmates the limbs / in such a way with ill-digested humor / that face and paunch no longer correspond…/ Divine Comedy, Inferno XXX, 49-54) (2). This horribly deformed sinner constantly craves for water (“…and now, alas, I crave a drop of water / The little brooks which toward the Arno run / down from the Casentino's green-clad hills, / and render all their channels cool and fresh, / are evermore before me, nor in vain / because their image makes me drier far / than this disease, which strips my face of flesh… Inferno XXX,63-69) (2). This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.