Avi Ohry
Tel Aviv, Israel

Dr. Placido Procesi (1928–2005) was an Italian physician interested in oriental studies and esoteric philosophy.¹ Born in Zagarolo, near Rome, he developed interests in Chinese medicine, acupuncture, and homeopathy. He also became deeply involved in traditional Japanese archery, seeing it not merely as a martial discipline but as a path of self-cultivation. He practiced in Rome and treated notable intellectuals.

Dr. Procesi’s name is remembered in connection with the extreme Italian fascist Giulio Evola (1898–1974).² Evola was the charismatic mentor-philosopher of an Italian neo-fascist and anti-Semitic terrorist group, and his books were translated into many languages. He was well known in Germany during the Third Reich. At first, Benito Mussolini admired him, but later he did not like Evola’s pro-Nazi, pro-Aryan, and anti-Catholic views. Evola claimed that races degenerate when their spirit vanishes or is weakened, and that the Jews destroy other races. At the end of 1943, he tried to escape from the Allied Forces and settled in Vienna. He was badly wounded during an air raid and became paralyzed from the waist down. Sent back to Italy, he was transferred to an orthopedic hospital in Bologna, and ultimately to Rome in 1951. Dr. Procesi became his physician and close associate, even though Procesi had no experience in rehabilitation medicine or in treating paraplegics.

It is possible that Procesi was inspired and influenced by clinicians who worked with patients with spinal cord injury. These included Antonio Maglio, who became director of the newly established Italian center for spinal cord care, as well as Angelo Massarelli, who wrote an Italian book on paraplegia. In England, Sir Ludwig Guttmann³ had established the first spinal cord injury unit in 1944, as did Howard Rusk, Donald Munro, Harry Botterell, Albin Jousse, and Gustave Gingras in North America.^4,5 Other countries took time to adopt these pioneers’ model.

People with severe spinal cord lesions rarely survived long before the days of modern rehabilitation medicine.⁶ Those who did included Georges Couthon, a paralyzed lawyer and leader of the French Revolution⁷; General Tadeusz Kościuszko (1746–1817), a Polish national hero captured and wounded in 1794⁸; and Joë Bousquet (1897–1950), a French poet who became paraplegic during World War I (1918) and survived remarkably until 1950 with the aid and guidance of his general practitioner father and uncle.⁹ Evola had been injured in 1945 at the age of 47 and survived as a paraplegic for 29 years under Dr. Procesi’s care.

This article is devoted to the memory of Ludwig Guttmann, Howard Rusk, and Gustave Gingras, with whom I met many times and was deeply inspired by.

References

1. Dupont M. Dictionnaire historique des Médecins. Larousse, 1999.
2. Placido Procesi. Accademia Romana Placido Procesi. https://www.accademiaprocesi.it/?page_id=111.
3. Ohry A, Silver JR. Ludwig Guttmann (1899-1980) and David Ben Gurion (1886-1973): an early account of the rehabilitation facilities in Israel. J Med Biogr, 2006;14(4):201-9.
4. Rusk HA. A world to care for. 1972. Am J Public Health, 2008;98(2):254-5, 257.
5. de Grandpré L. Gustave Gingras, un médecin canadien connu dans tous les coins du monde [Gustave Gingras, a Canadian physician known in all the corners of the world]. Can Med Assoc J. 1974;110(8):967-8. French.
6. Ohry A. People with disabilities before the days of modern rehabilitation medicine: did they pave the way? Disabil Rehabil, 2004;26(9):546-8.
7. Ohry A, Ohry-Kossoy K. Georges Couthon: a paralysed lawyer and leader of the French Revolution. Paraplegia, 1989;27(5):382-4.
8. Ohry A. Kościuszko and his spinal injury. Ortopedia Traumatologia Rehabilitacja, 2011;13:5(6):521-530.
9. Ohry A, Ohry-Kossoy K. Joë Bousquet: paraplegia as a poet’s plight and challenge. Paraplegia, 1988;26(4):273-7.