Medical trash
The location of Caesar’s Forum in Rome was previously a landfill from the Renaissance era that several institutions in Italy and Denmark. The group outlines the history of the waste and its contents in an article that was published in the journal Antiquity.
In 46 B.C., Julius Caesar's Forum in Rome was constructed as a venue for holding broad Senate-related public meetings. The facility continued to be functional far into the 16th century, when individuals from the Renaissance utilised it as a hospital. At the time, doctors established protocols for handling diseases and the clothing and equipment used to treat ill patients because they were aware that certain illnesses could be contagious.The development of protocols, such as the discarding of tools after a single use and the burial or burning of possibly contaminated possessions, has been credited in part to doctors and medical researchers in Italy, according to earlier studies. In this latest attempt, the study team discovered evidence of such practises being used in practice—a landfill near to what was once a hospital where people of the period dumped or buried supplies related to care for the sick.
Only two years after it was found, teams of archaeologists have been gradually excavating the trash to learn more about medical procedures used in the Renaissance. A cistern that was discovered in the waste was the team’s main focus for this new endeavour.
The cistern had been purposefully sealed off with a clay top after being filled with medical waste, the researchers add. The glass urine flasks known as matula were most prominently present when the cover was removed, revealing that the cistern had been filled with a wide variety of beads, jars, figurines, and even cash. These flasks were used by clinicians to evaluate urine samples in order to identify the signs of conditions like diabetes or jaundice, according to earlier studies.
The fragments of furniture that had been burnt because it was thought that a patient may have been infected with the plague were also discovered by the researchers in the cistern. These clamps were made of lead.
