PASSING OF ANCIENT SAGE
EUROPE’S OLDEST DOCTOR The New Year was still young in Northern Italy when the old doctor who had seen 107 New Year dawns closed his eyes to open them no more. Old Doctor Giovanni Gortani was looked on with pride in the province where Venice and Ravenna are proud monuments of antiquity as one of its ancient and honoured relics. It was claimed for him that he was the oldest doctor in Europe. He was also proud of it. and when a journalist on his hundredth birthday told him a Paris doctor claimed to be older he indignantly denied it. Until he was ninety he went on working, and in the war the lively little man with the white beard was as familiar and welcome a figure in the wards of a hospital as he had been in many a cottage homo. In' the district of Aquilcia, where Dr Gortani lived and died, malaria is still common and exacts a yearly toll ol lives. He had become a specialist in its treatment. But he was the present help in trouble of many a sufferer from lesser ills before Garibaldi hail made a United Italy.
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Bibliographic details
Evening Star, Issue 21709, 2 May 1934, Page 3
Word Count
198PASSING OF ANCIENT SAGE Evening Star, Issue 21709, 2 May 1934, Page 3
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