Francesco La Cava

[2] In 1902, La Cava graduated with honors and was offered a free job working with Professor Antonio Cardarelli, who had observed his medical abilities; financial constraints prevented him from accepting it.

[3] So, he began his military career as a medical officer in the Bersaglieri Corps in Florence and when he returned to Calabria in 1904, he took over the tiny rural management of Bovalino where he met Concettina Morisciano, a noble, intelligent young Bovalinese woman with whom he had ten children.

[5] In 1911, La Cava released a paper titled "On the Presence of Leishmanie in the Cerebrospinal Fluid of a Child with Kala-azar",[6] that highlighted key factors to determine the disease's diagnosis: they observed that the "eastern button" was frequent and recognized the focus of the inquiry; a female dog in which they discovered Leishmania parasites.

Furthermore, La Cava learnt that Dr. Rogers, an English tropical disease expert, had found emetine hydrochloride as a therapy for amebiasis; he was able to treat the cases of dysentery he had diagnosed in Bovalino.

As a short diary entitled "Diario della vita che passai quando il mio caro Ciccio si trovava in guerra di liberazione dei nostri fratelli" reveals, Concetta proved to be not only a woman, but also an outstanding wife during these difficult years.

[8] The deep humanistic culture, the knowledge of Latin and Greek, combined with the love of art, led La Cava to visit museums and galleries to analyze in depth many problems with the meticulousness and patience typical of a doctor.

During the 1930s La Cava expanded his Christian faith by focusing on theological and philological topics, such as "The Passion and Death of Jesus Christ as depicted by medical science" and "Communion Eucharistic through the stomach fistula".

Michelangelo’s anatomical and physiological knowledge can be seen in the precise representation of body details, in the tension of the limbs of the saint and in the sharpness of skin, folded and held tight to reinforce the seal, like the methods used by anatomists for autopsies.

[12] Around 1930 he experienced a rapprochement to religion, from which he had distanced because of the liberal ideas he had embraced since his college days; this renewed faith led him to scientific-religious studies on the mechanism of death by crucifixion.