From the retrospective study of 3375 patients affected by clinically definite or probable multiple sclerosis (MS), 149 patients were collected with onset of the disease before the age of 16 years (4.4%). Female/male ratio was higher than that of the adult onset MS (AOMS) population (2.2 vs 1.6) particularly at ages of onset after 12 years (3.0, P = 0.007 vs AOMS). Among initial symptoms, those suggesting brainstem dysfunction (25%) were more frequent compared to other systems and compared to AOMs symptoms; motor and sensory disturbances were slightly less frequent (respectively 17.5% and 18.3%). Optic neuritis appeared in 16.5% of cases with onset in childhood and in 16.2% of cases with AOMS, cerebellar disturbances respectively in 9.1% and 7.7%. The first interattack-interval and the clinical course of early onset MS did not differ significantly from AOMS. In early onset MS patients with disease duration < 8 years, cases with EDSS > 6 were slightly more frequent than in the AOMS group (P = 0.04). The frequency of cases for different levels of disability was similar for disease duration > 8 years.
After Mussolini’s regime collapsed, Italy rebuilt itself as a nation and a democracy. The Republican Constitution approved in 1948 rejected the ideologies of both racism and racial discrimination, which had been strengthened and made harsher by Fascism since the mid-1930s. Yet, despite this, racism and racialisation continued in the post-Fascist years. The article analyses how the presence of former colonial subjects in Italy between the 1940s and 1960s was perceived, represented and managed, and demonstrates that the hegemonic discourse of the post-war period still considered Italy to be a white and ethnically homogeneous nation. It considers the stories of people from Libya and Eritrea who applied for Italian citizenship and the life in Italy of some Somali students in the 1960s. From different perspectives, these case studies show how in republican Italy inclusion and exclusion, as well as concepts of identity and otherness, were the consequence of processes of racialisation and ideas inherited from the previous period.
This article explores the role of colonialism in the education of the Italian elites from\ud
the Liberal era to Fascism through a study of the teaching of colonial history in the\ud
universities. The rebirth of Italy’s colonial ambitions at the end of the nineteenth\ud
century and their expansion during the two decades of Fascism resulted in the creation\ud
of new courses in ‘Colonial Sciences’ in the higher education curriculum. The\ud
development of these studies was also part of a longer-term series of changes in the\ud
Italian university system that started in the early twentieth century. Colonial History\ud
was taught in only a small number of institutions in the Liberal eras, but gained greater\ud
importance and autonomy under Fascism. An analysis of the courses, of the careers of\ud
those responsible for them and of the text books they used offers a measure of their\ud
differing impact on the education of Italian students in the Liberal and Fascist periods and reveals the models of ‘italianita`’ they set out for the future ruling class
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