Today, technology provides numerous educational aids for teaching science, such as microscopic films, 3D digital models and the like, but once upon a time that was not the case. To help his students, professor Canestrini, who served at the University of Padua from 1869 to 1900, acquired several educational items, including two walnut boxes in 1877, containing blown-up wax models of the different stages of development of two human parasites: Trichinella spiralis, a nematode worm responsible for trichinellosis, and Tenia solium, a flatworm better known as a tapeworm.
As specified on the handwritten label affixed to the boxes, the models were made by Egisto Tortori (1829-1893), a skilled modeller and the last exponent of the Florence-based waxworks laboratory known as Officina Ceroplastica Fiorentina, under the supervision of Prof. Pietro Marchi (1833-1923), known for his studies on worms and parasites.
