OMBROSI, GIOVANNI PAOLO. – Florentine jurist of the 18th century (d. 1774–75). Son of the Roman Rota advocate Bartolomeo, he studied law under Vittorio Amadori (Martinius) and refined his learning in the library of Marchese Antonio Niccolini. After serving in Rome as secretary to Cornelio Caprara, auditor of the Sacred Roman Rota and later cardinal, he practiced law before the Florentine Rota.
His name is linked to the monumental collection of Florentine Rota decisions: *Selectarum Rotae florentinae decisionum thesaurum ex bibliotheca Johannis Pauli O. jurisconsulti et in Florentina Curia advocati*, 2 vols., with a most ample index of matters (Florence 1760; 2nd ed. 1772–85). He also wrote a *Memoriale textuum cardinalium juris qui frequentius in foro ac quotidiana praxis occurrunt* (ibid. 1769, 1824; Genoa 1799). Augusto Moreschini
OMBRELLONE – A tintinnabulum of the basilica of S. Maria in Trastevere – Rome.
prescribed use (as required by rubrics, etc.) is already noted in the instructions of St Charles Borromeo); outside Italy it is rarely used. It is proper only to the Blessed Sacrament, the relics of the Holy Cross, and the instruments of the Passion; it is excluded for relics of the saints.
The red or crimson damask ombrellone, trimmed with gold, was used for the popes (e.g., on their estates or journeys), carried by a palfrey to shield it from the sun; certain dignitaries of the papal court enjoyed the insignia of a sky-blue silk ombrellone. Sovereigns also used it; many communes and municipal magistrates employed it as a badge of dignity and sign of jurisdiction. The ombrellone came from the East, where it was used as an insignia of divine and human power. In processions the statues of idols were surmounted by an ombrellone to denote their majesty. In Assyrian bas-reliefs kings are shown beneath an ombrellone. From the East, by way of Egypt and Greece, it passed to the Romans and was used by distinguished persons. For its Christian medieval use there is genuine evidence in a representation, probably of Giovanni III, bishop of Pavia, who at the instance of Berengarius received it (191) from Pope Anastasius III. In a 13th-century fresco in the chapel of St Sylvester at the Santi Quattro in Rome, this pope is seen followed by a cleric bearing the ombrellone (v. pl. XL of vol. IV, col. 705).
OMBRELLONE (conopaeum, PADIGLIONE, SINNICCHIO). – It is an insignia in the form of a large umbrella called “conopeum” (in decrees = padiglione), proper to the major and minor Roman basilicas and to those outside Rome that hold the privilege and title of “minor basilica.”
of similars (similia similibus curantur) conceived by Hippocrates, confirmed by Paracelsus, and finally enunciated and vindicated by Samuel Christian Friedrich Hahnemann (b. 1755, d. 1843), doctor of medicine at the University of Erlangen (Germany).
To dispel any appearance of paradox in the principle that diseases are cured by similar diseases, there are numerous clinical observations of cures that followed the onset, in the same patient, of a morbid affection very like the one already present. Yet the best commentary on the law of similars is found in the constitutional and synthetic conception of disease that Hippocrates first advanced, which Hahnemann made the foundation of his system and which modern clinical medicine has resumed, updated, and developed through the work of A. De Giovanni, G. Viola, N. Pende in Italy, and abroad especially by the Frenchman L. Lévy and the Spaniard G. Mafra. The Hippocratic idea refers above all to the general and constitutional causes of disease; without denying the importance of external morbific agents, it seeks above all to recognize the characteristics of the “morbid terrain” and to regard the patient’s symptoms not as harmful nuisances that the physician must necessarily remove, but as genuine expressions of a natural defense of the organism. It follows that rational therapy will not aim to combat these symptoms but, in a sense, to favor and strengthen them so as to assist the organism’s healing effort.
Hahnemann’s merit lies in recognizing that drugs can be usefully prescribed according to this principle and employed so as to reproduce in every patient a symptomatic picture, a small artificial disease, which, by dint of perfect similarity, superimposes its own symptoms on the natural ones and thereby intensifies them just enough to maximize the salutary reaction.
Cases of morbid affections whose cure cannot be explained without the intervention of the law of similars—perhaps applied unconsciously—are very frequent and were known to clinicians even before Hahnemann. Thus, for example: the observations of Muralto and Wedel on the beneficial action, in certain colics of children, of jalap, which in ordinary posology produces colic and intestinal evacuations in healthy subjects; the cure of some conjunctivitis by means of euphrasia, which in normal doses tends to inflame the eye’s mucosa (Murray); the hemorrhages that Baglivi, Barbeyrac, and Dalberg saw cease under the action of hippochaonan, a remedy notoriously capable, in certain doses, of producing hemorrhagic states; the treatment of seasickness with tobacco, which in turn can provoke characteristic syndromes of nausea and violent vertigo; the beneficial results observed by Whistling in certain varieties of epilepsy with the use of *Agaricus muscarius*, which in poisoning cases essentially provokes tremors, convulsions, and loss of consciousness in a picture very like that of an epileptic attack. In all these cases the beneficent intervention of an artificial disease, certainly produced by the “similar” remedy, is evident; it acted in the same direction as nature, as a supplementary and specific stimulus to the organism’s reactive powers.
To render possible the search for the most suitable remedy to produce the similar disease, it is necessary to know with precision the effects of individual drugs on the healthy human subject.
Carried out with the requisite scientific rigor, such investigations have shown, among other things, that the action of a drug always unfolds in two distinct phases: the first, which Hahnemann called “primary action” and attributed to the toxic action of the drug and hence, practically, to the dose employed; the second, or “secondary effect,” which Hahnemann identified with the organism’s effort to free itself from the disturbances provoked by the drug. It is therefore essentially to the secondary effect—that is, to the vital reaction—that the salutary action of the remedy must be attributed; and since the vital reaction is excited by small stimuli while it is stifled or even nullified by overly strong stimuli (Arndt–Schultz law of fundamental biology), correct posology must reduce the primary action to a minimum and hence reduce the doses to a minimum. This is the chief reason why homeopathy prefers its drugs in minimal and often imponderable doses; but this must be regarded only as a logical corollary of the law of similars, not as a fundamental pillar of the system, as some have mistakenly believed.
However, the minimal dose of homeopathic remedies is not the result of a mere attenuation. When Hahnemann, in fact, progressively reduced the doses during his experiments and went beyond the boundaries of the imponderable, he began to seriously fear that he had also transgressed the limits of reasonableness. His doses, now infinitesimal, were nothing more than highly diluted solutions; with no other aim than to ensure a uniform distribution of the remedy in the solvent, he then adopted the practice of systematically diluting according to a progressive scale (decimal or centesimal) and of subjecting the vials to a certain number of succussions at each passage from one concentration to the immediately lower one. Following this system, he observed that the therapeutic action of his solutions persisted not only in a specific manner but even to an increasing degree; moreover, this intensification of the drug’s activity did not occur if the solutions were not succussed. Hahnemann gave the name “dynamization” to this procedure, indicating that it aims to free the immaterial forces contained within the matter. In reality, the daily confirmation of biological control authorizes one to think, with Hahnemann, that the practice of dynamization may reveal in drugs specific energies and latent biochemical affinities, perhaps through a modification and disintegration of their original physical structure.
Apart from any hypothesis regarding the physical state to which the drug may be brought through Hahnemannian dynamization, it is proven that the infinitesimal dose proves active only when the remedy is perfectly “homeopathic” to the clinical case, that is, when the array of symptoms it can provoke in a healthy organism closely resembles (simillimum) those of the patient. It is therefore indispensable that the patient be examined thoroughly, not only through careful inspection of the affected organs and functions but also through the study of his subjective sensations and mental symptoms, especially valuing those peculiar and individual facts that, being characteristic of his mode of reaction, better define his morbid personality. The homeopathic physician cannot use the pathognomonic symptoms of the disease, which serve only for clinical diagnosis, but only the pathognomonic symptoms of the patient, the only ones useful for the purposes of psycho-biological diagnosis, which in homeopathy is identified with the diagnosis of the remedy. Homeopathic practice thus requires a dual diagnosis and confronts the disease not by administering a remedy for each symptom (as is done in symptomatic cures) but by administering that remedy which alone reproduces the entire morbid syndrome, with the best possible polychrest action, therefore specific in the most ideal sense of the word.
Scientific advancements, new means of clinical investigation, and the overall evolution of medical science and therapy have not only left Hahnemann’s edifice intact but in many cases have reinforced it with authoritative confirmations. New theories and therapeutic systems appear and disappear every day; Hahnemann’s doctrine, perhaps the only one to have faced the pitfalls of opposition and criticism from its very inception, stands among the few that have preserved their vitality and improved their efficacy.