The past is irreversible and immutable. But history, our understanding of the past, can be changed, if it turns out to be based on false assumptions. This is what occurred with Domenico Cirillo, a renowned naturalist, physician, and patriot of the Neapolitan Republic of 1799, whose election to the American Philosophical Society went unrecorded for over two centuries due to a clerical error that was rectified only a few weeks ago.
During the 18th Century, Naples was a magnificent European capital that attracted intellectuals from all over the world. Domenico Cirillo, a professor of botany at the University of Naples, practiced medicine for both the poor and the nobility, including foreign dignitaries like Isaac Jamineau, the British Consul in Naples, who was fascinated by botany and the eruptions of Vesuvius. He even wrote an article in the Pennsylvania Chronicle describing in great detail the eruption of 1767. In 1764, also John Morgan, a renowned physician from Philadelphia, visited Naples. In the following years, he recommended the election of several corresponding members to the American Society, including Jamineau and, most importantly, Cirillo.
Indeed, the minutes of the American Philosophical Society meeting of January 16, 1769, mention that “a letter [was read] from D. Cirillo of Naples to Doctor J. Morgan thanking him for having proposed him a member of the Society”. Yet, Cirillo’s name was not added to the Society’s membership rolls, which instead recorded the election, on April 15, 1768, of a certain “Professor Famitz” of Naples.
One of the first historians to look into Cirillo’s unrecorded election was Whitfield J. Bell Jr., former Librarian of the American Philosophical Society. In 1997, he uncovered a crucial piece of evidence: a letter, dated November 3, 1767, in which Jamineau invited Morgan to get in touch with “My family physician … Professor of Botany here [in Naples] to whom this university is oblig’d for the introduction of Linnaeas’s System”. The description provided by Jamineau perfectly aligned with Cirillo’s biography, since he was a botany professor at the University of Naples and an early adopter of Carl Linnaeus’ taxonomy for classifying plant species. Thus, Bell hypothesized that Famitz and Cirillo were, in fact, the same person.
So where did the name “Famitz” come from? According to Bell, it may have resulted from a transcription error in which Jamineau wrote “My Family Physician,” but Morgan mistakenly read it as “Mr. Famitz Physician,” leading to the latter’s election in 1768. However, this theory would not explain why, in the following year, it was Cirillo who wrote to Morgan expressing gratitude for his nomination to the Society instead of Famitz.
Fascinated by this historical conundrum, I requested a copy of Jamineau’s letter from the Historical Medical Library of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. The sentence mentioned by Bell appears in a postscript in the last page of the letter. The handwriting of the British Consul is almost indecipherable, but the comparison with other passages of the letter leaves no doubts: it says “Family” and not “Famitz”. The penultimate letter is undoubtedly an “l” and not a “t”, as it lacks the horizontal dash; the last letter is certainly a “y” and not a “z”, as it is identical to the ending of the words “university” and “botany” contained in the same sentence.
The next step I took was to confirm that no one by the name of “Famitz” taught botany in Naples in the late 18th Century. Many archival documents from that period were destroyed by the Wehrmacht in 1943, but all the secondary sources I came across attribute to Cirillo, not to Famitz, the chair of botany at the University of Naples from 1760 to 1777. Besides, a surname like “Famitz” – quite uncommon by Neapolitan standards – should have left some traces in library catalogues or in the membership rolls of other academic societies of the time. But I found no match. Most likely, “Professor Famitz” of Naples never existed.
How, then, did the events that led to the election of Famitz unfold? While Bell posited that Morgan made the error, I believe otherwise. Having visited Naples in 1764, Morgan likely met or at least heard of Cirillo. When he read Jamineau’s letter describing a Neapolitan physician who was a botany professor and a Linnaean, he must have thought of Cirillo and recommended his election to the Society, providing Jamineau’s letter as evidence of his international reputation.
In my opinion, the mistake was made by the person at the Society who followed up on Morgan’s recommendation. Unlike Morgan, he did not recognize Cirillo from Jamineau’s description. Looking for the name of the person to be elected to the Society, he must have read “Famitz”. Thus, the Society issued a membership certificate in that name and sent it to Thomas Jefferson in Paris, so that he could deliver it to the new member.
Unaware of the mix-up, Morgan wrote to Cirillo to inform him of his upcoming election to the Society. Cirillo thanked him with a letter that was read at the meeting of the American Philosophical Society of January 16, 1769. None of those who attended that meeting pointed out the inconsistency with the Society’s membership rolls, which were corrected only a few weeks ago, by changing the name of member no. 188 from “Professor Famitz” to “Domenico Maria Leone Cirillo” and adding a brief biography of the latter.
Domenico Cirillo’s posthumous recognition as a member of the United States’ oldest learned society highlights the significant role that Neapolitan science, university, and culture played on the international stage during the 18th Century. This recognition also symbolizes the profound connection between Naples and the United States, as demonstrated by the renowned correspondence between Gaetano Filangieri and Benjamin Franklin, one of the American Philosophical Society’s founders.
