NEl 1902, Graduates in Italy are 224 in all, of which only 24 in medicine. In reality there were 26, because two ladies spent in Pavia in 1900 are missing in the list of the official bulletin. The first ever had been Ernestina Paper, In Florence, in 1877 and Maria Farnè Velledain Turin, the following year. Amalia Moretti Foggia, who was Petronilla and also Dr. Amal, graduated in 1898, Montessori in 1896, to make some famous name.
Even the woman we want to speak bears a famous name, at least in Sardinia: it is called Adelasia, like the judge of Gallura of the thirteenth century, and surname makes Coconut. The daughter of the intellectual Salvatore Cocco Solinas, was born in the year in which the Kuliscioff graduated on 1885. Sassari, his citywith a thesis on the “selflytic power of the serum of blood as a contribution to immune reactions”. It is not the very first Sardinian medical woman: in 1902 she had already graduated from Cagliari Paola Satta, born in 1877. Then enough, No one else had tried us anymore.
Adelasia though it was not limited to studying only, His life will be that of a very normal woman of his time, with a private dimension: in fact in the meantime she got married to a boy who met at the university, Giovanni Floris, who became a veterinarian. So much so that she as a good wife He followed him from Sassari to Nuoro And that’s where the prefect asks A conduct in Barbagiaas if it were the most natural thing in the world. Embarrassed, he niche. Is there a law that prevents him? No. So? It is not that it is forbidden, but in short, Just use some common sense. Passy that a medical woman takes care of children and women, making the pediatrician or gynecologist. But the doctor conducted is another thing. Must face the urgencies, respond to night emergenciesenter into far from respectable houses, e Adelasia is a young lady.
Adelasia Cocco (Sassari 1885 – Nuoro 1983) in his laboratory. He graduated in Medicine in 1913.
“At the time there was no woman among the approximately 12 thousand” conduits “who operated in Italy” Rosy Bindi writes in his preface to the book by Eugenia Tognotti Of courage and passionpublished by FrancoAngeli, who tells the truly “adventurous story of Adelasia Cocco”, as the subtitle says.
Too bad that was a periodic: The compensation for the conduct began to no longer cover the cost of living And he was struggling to find someone who lent himself; So the city councilors of Nuoro, led by healthy pragmatism, assigned to her the place in the old district of Seuna where the Crème de la Crème certainly did not live and where the doctor, exceeded the distrust of the authoritiesfound himself dealing with that of his patients. At best, They looked at her curiously and asked her where the doctor was. In the worst, they refused to get cured by her.
On the back of a mule from his patients
“Elegant, cultured, brilliant conversator, self -confident”, competent, charismatic, Adelasia succeeds despite everything to conquer people’s trust. So much so that when Dr. Andrea Romagna, conducted of Lollove (the small stone village near Nuoro in which Grace Deledda would have set his novel The mother ), he is killed in an ambush, they propose to replace it. Anyone who would hesitate. She accepts immediately.
And it seems to see her, Adelasia, long skirts, gloves and hat, while reaches the back of a mule, Obviously riding on the Amazon, the country of 400 souls, peasants and shepherds, escorted by a municipal income That wonders for the whole way what the hell could have done badly to deserve such a parmesan. Back and forth, regularly, frequently, In order not to leave the Lollovesi without assistance. While there is She takes her license, the first Sardinian woman to achieve her in 1919to seek, where the roads allow it, to gain in speed and autonomy.
Adelasia was the first Sardinian woman who took her license to go to take care of her patients in Lollove.
They are black years, though. «In 1923 Adelasia issued a medical certificate to teacher Angela Maccioni, suspect anti -fascistto justify his absence to the event for the anniversary of the march on Rome. He writes that because of his health conditions Angela could not participate in “emotional ceremonies” ». The sprinkling diagnosis on the alleged pathogenic effect of parades and regime ceremonies would not have been forgotten. She takes care of everyone with it same commitmentpeople of the people e prominent personality Like the same grace Deledda, friend of her father, or the poet Sebastiano Satta, a heartfelt chronicler of the Nuorese reality.
Above all, he realizes more than the importance of thehygiene and of the preventiondedicating himself to a continuous work of health education. So much so that in 1928 He is appointed Nuoro health officer. But the apparatus does not forget the Maccioni case: The pro-Matteotti teacher will then be dismissed from teaching e It will also end in prisonfollowing the delation of one of his students. “The suspicion that Adelasia sympathized with Nuorese anti -fascist cenacle will never fail and (…) will translate into a series of abuses” Rosy Bindi writes.
Claimed his rights and won
The story of Dr. Cocco is in fact a cross -section of the “conditions in which women lived and worked during fascism (…) burdened (…) from the impairment ofimage ideological of the woman like angel of the hearth (…), Corollary of the ancient stereotype female inferiority “.
Adelasia meanwhile puts the world of children. The first dies small, at the age of three, of Scarlettina, and the pain becomes a stimulus to devote itself to research. Framed in territorial health services, undergoes the interference of the local power group. When They ask her to resign “from her place as director of the Provincial Institute of Hygiene and Prophylaxis After the two -year trial, in 1934 “, she resists, claiming her rights and opening” a very long dispute which involves the prefect, the Ministry of the Interior, the General Management of Public Health, the Provincial doctor “.
It is a rare case in which the reading of the bureaucratic documents is not boring at all: from replicas to appeals they emerge “not only disapproval of a woman who I am ambyy to cover roles traditionally carried out by menbut also the aversion to what Adelasia embodied: a doctor, (a woman) not submissive ». When in the spring of 1935 he received the news of his victorious reinstatementnot surprisingly Adelasia “is committed, on behalf of the Court of Nuoro, in the material analysis taken by a woman killed after a attempt of carnal violencewhich took place near Lollove. If in the past they were the loungers to identify the “signs” of violencenow it’s one science woman to look for the truth in a laboratory ». An epochal change. The stubborn and tenacious Dr. Adelasia Cocco it will live up to almost a hundred yearsactive in the Medical Women Association, turning off in 1983.
The cover of the book by Eugenia Tognotti, with the preface by Rosy Bindi.
A small way to steps, like his life
In Nuoro, As you read on the website Female toponymy, They dedicated a small way done with stepsnext to the Cathedral of Santa Maria della Neve, without even a plaque. Little thing, but involuntarily very evocative: she also had An all -up -to -date existence. Life is made of stairs, says the proverb. She climbed in silence, Up to the last step, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
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