Nun cured of uterine and breast cancer by vision of Vincent Ferrer. Unrecorded.

[Cancer] / [Nuns] / [Vincent Ferrer] / Carlo Rivalta. Relazione veridica del molto rev. sig. D. Carlo Rivalta arciprete del Castello di Fognano Intorno alla Miracolosa Guarigione avvenuta la notte del SS. Natale dell’ Anno 1749. Nella persona della M.R.M. Suor Mar. Gaetana Dragoni faentina per intercessione di S. Vincenzo Ferrerio. 4to [21.0 x 15.5 cm], [2] ff. In Faenza, ed in Genova: Nella Stamperia del Franchelli, 1750. Disbound, holes from apparently having been bound into a composite volume. Uncut, minor spotting and staining. 
 
 
Unrecorded issue of this unusual ephemeral item providing a ‘true report’ of a certain Suor Maria Gaetana Dragoni, a nun at Fognano (some ten miles southwest of Faenza), who in 1749 suffered from chronic stomach pain, vomiting, convulsions, etc. The text is authored by the Fognano priest Carlo Rivalta, who no doubt knew Maria Gaetana Dragoni personally.
 
The nun’s frightful symptoms were unrelieved by medicine. A certain doctor Camillo Zanetti performed an examination and discovered uterine cancer (“un Scirro formato nell’utero’”). Later, the surgeon Fabio Bassi found a tumor in her left breast (“erasele formato nella sinistra Mammella un tumore sirroso”).
 
Near death, Suor Maria Gaetana Dragoni performed several novenas to St. Vincent Ferrer (1350-1419), who then on Christmas Day appeared to her in a vision and affected an immediate and total cure. This was confirmed by her ‘cell mate,’ a certain Suor Maria Lucrezia Carroli. Doctor Zanetti and the surgeon Bassi confirmed the cure.
 
This relazione, although fundamentally anti-rationalist, nevertheless borrows its form from medical case studies of the era and thus reveals a tension between increasingly effective
scientific cures and a traditional reliance on the miraculous intercession of saints.
 
 
This issue of the report of the cure of Suor Maria Gaetana Dragoni (published in Faenza & Genova by Franchelli) is not located by OPAC/SBN/ICCU, OCLC or KVK. It is known in two other versions, which are both rare: “In Faenza, ed in. Bologna: nella stamperia del Longhi stampatore arcivescovile, 1750” (IT\ICCU\RL1E\001173; at Biblioteca Giovardiana [Veroli] & Universitat de València) and “In Venezia ed in Brescia: dalle stampe di Giacomo Turlino, 1750” (IT\ICCU\VIAE\025013; at Biblioteca civica Bertoliana Palazzo San Giacomo (Vicenza).