Female science, experimentation, and ‘common utility’.Teresa Ciceri, Candida Lena Perpenti, and Alessandro Volta’s research

Between the eighteenth and nineteenth century in Como two women, who had been so far excluded from scientific dictionaries, distinguished themselves and attained important achievements in the fields of agronomy, chemistry and botanic. They were Teresa Ciceri (1750–1821) and Candida Medina-Coeli (1764–1846), also known under her husband’s last name, Lena Perpenti. Alessandro Volta played an important role in the life and career of both of them. Teresa Ciceri, who was the dearest “friend and counsellor” of the famous Physicist, shared with him the enlightened faith in science as means to improve the life conditions of their contemporaries as well as boldness in their experimentations. She was first in Lombardy to introduce among her peasants the cultivation of potatoes, and she managed to obtain thread from the stem of lupines. Moved by the same purpose, Lena Perpenti managed to obtain thread from asbestos—which was used during the following decades to sew firefighters’ uniforms—and to create fireproof ink and paper. Being interested as well in botany, she organized a herbarium with local plants, which she classified according to Linnaeus’ system, and she discovered a bellflower that had not been yet described, known nowadays as Campanula Raineri Perpenti. In Como, within a climate scarcely propitious to women’s emancipation, the two scientists were not hindered because their achievements were perceived as a demonstration and a practical consequence of typical female wit. Despite their innovation, they were regarded as aiming to “spin and sew”, a natural complement of traditional domestic abilities. By supporting them, Alessandro Volta himself went beyond gender barriers, showing that barriers to women’s achievements were historical and cultural, not natural in origin.