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No secure identification of Contursi Terme, where ancient remains confirm a settlement at the confluence of theTanagro (ancient Tanager) with theSele, is likely. The RomanUrsentum noted inPliny's Natural History (III.2), is more usually identified withCaggiano.[3] The local historian A. Filomarino,[4] based on etymologies oftoponyms, placed the commune's origins as early as the fourth century AD, the result of efforts by the inhabitants of the former Saginara and Contursi to fortify a site that was destroyed by Alaric's Goths at the end of the fourth century. Under theLombards it appears to have belonged to thegastaldate ofConza,[5] when a fortress was built in 840 by Orso, count of Conza, from whom the stronghold probably took its nameCastrum comitis Ursi, the "castle of count Orso")[6] Orso took the part of his kinsmanSiconulf of Salerno (839–51) in internecine wars withRadelchis I of Benevento, who had been a former gastaldo of Conza.
The later history of Contursi Termi[7] formed a local part of thePrincipality of Salerno, which was retained as a title until the territory was divided in three byCharles II of Naples in 1287, Contursi passing to the prince of Citerione (or Citra) and held by the family Sanseverino. In 1348, Contursi was taken byLouis of Taranto, king of Naples by right of his wife Joanna; he passed the title to his adherents, the Origlia. In 1448 Antonio Sanseverino succeeded in reclaiming title to Contursi, but the Sanseverino heirs held it only until the early sixteenth century, under theViceroys of Naples. From the seventeenth century the commune passed successively through a number of families, the Bernalli, Pepe, Ludovisi and Parisani Bonanno. The last to hold the contado before the reunification of Italy were the Pisani di Tolentino, marchesi di Caggiano.
The thermal baths, insecurely linked to notices by Roman writers, were described in a manuscriptBalnea Contursi of 1231;[8] The fifteen thermal springs, with varying mineral content, have retained their curative reputation, for bathing, both in warm pools and in a cold plunge, and for drinking.
Families from the village have played an important role in the understanding ofParkinson's disease. In 1986,Larry Golbe, a doctor based at theUniversity of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, came across a family with six Parkinson's patients, and found that they had originated in Contursi.[9] A few months later he found a second family with several Parkinson's patients, who also had ancestors from the village.[9] This prompted Golbe to collaborate with Giuseppe DiIorio at the University of Naples, to analyse the DNA from Contursani and people who had emigrated from the village across the world.[9] They identified three families in Italy and three families in the US, all of whom were descendants from a single couple who lived in Contursi in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.[9] Of 400 members of this extended family, known as the "Contursi kindred", 61 are known to have had Parkinson's.[9] This showed for the first time that Parkinson's could be inherited.[10]
GeneticistsAlice Lazzarini andWilliam Johnson worked through the early 1990s trying to isolate the mutation that caused the disease.[9] In 1996, a team led byMihael Polymeropoulos at the National Institutes of Health located by linkage analysis the Parkinson's disease gene of the Contursi kindred on the long arm of human chromosome 4.[11] In 1997, the same team identified a point mutation in the alpha-synuclein gene in the Contursi kindred as well as Greek pedigrees with Parkinson's disease.[12][13] The NIH team and a team led byMaria Grazia Spillantini reported on alpha-synuclein deposits in Lewy bodies as well as alpha-synuclein inclusions in other neurodegenerative disorders.[14][15]
^The history is taken fromStoria delle Termi and from Vito Lembo, historical notes inPer la Campania, December 1905 (on-line text).
^The manuscript is conserved in the Archivio della Badia della SS. Trinità di Cava dei Tirreni (Storia delle termi).
^abcdefJacobs, Eve (2004)."Gene Hunter".UMDNJ Magazine. University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. Archived fromthe original on June 6, 2013. RetrievedDecember 9, 2013.
^Golbe, LI; Di Iorio, G; Bonavita, V; Miller, DC; Duvoisin, RC; et al. (1990), "A large kindred with autosomal dominant Parkinson's disease",Ann Neurol., vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 276–82,doi:10.1002/ana.410270309,PMID2158268,S2CID31767548
^Polymeropoulos MH, Higgins JJ, Golbe LI, Johnson WG, Ide SE, Di Iorio G, et al. (1996). "Mapping of a gene for Parkinson's disease to chromosome 4q21-q23".Science.274 (5290):1197–9.doi:10.1126/science.274.5290.1197.PMID8895469.S2CID25330514.
