Effects of the Digital App "Support, Monitoring and Reminder Technology for Mild Dementia" (SMART4MD) on People With Mild Cognitive Impairment and Their Informal Caregivers: 18-Month Multicenter Pragm

In July 1735, Baroness Massimiliana Moltke wrote from Vienna to Florence to thank Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici (1667–1743), the last Medici princess, for a powder that had cured three noble children of violent convulsions ( [ASF], 6341, fol. 126r). The physicians, the Baroness wrote, had already them; months later, the children remained in perfect health []. This brief epistolary exchange offers a starting point for a narrower question: what did early modern medicine actually do, in practice, when faced with the sudden, reversible episodes of impaired awareness and responsiveness, phenomena that modern neurology would describe as seizure-related alterations of consciousness? This article uses two archival recipes, the [ powder] against the falling sickness and a preparation of amber essence, as a case study in how pre-modern therapeutic practice approached clinical phenomena that today lie at the intersection of epileptology and consciousness science. The remedy’s name is itself linguistically revealing: , [Recipe for making the powder against the , or ] []. Three vernacular terms carry the clinical sense: , .