Emma turned 117 in November
Emma Morano, who is believed to have been the last
surviving person born in the 1800s, passed away at her home in northern Italy.
She swore to the end that the secret of a long life was
a diet of two raw eggs a day.
Dr Carlo Bava, who announced the death, said that Ms
Morano’s carer had called him to say she had died today while sitting in an
armchair at her home in Verbania, a town on Italy’s Lake Maggiore.
He said he had last seen Ms Morano, who was just
12-years-old when the Titanic sank, on Friday when ‘she thanked me and held my
hand’, as she did every time he called on her.
While she had been spending more time sleeping and less
time speaking in recent weeks, she had still eaten her daily raw egg and
biscuits that day, he said.
Dr Bava, who also lives in Verbania, had been her doctor
for nearly a quarter of a century.
Ms Morano, born on November 29 1899, had been living in
a one-room apartment, where she was kept company by her carer and two elderly
nieces.
Dr Bava said: ‘She didn’t suffer. I’m happy she didn’t
suffer but passed away that way, tranquilly.’
He said she had been her usual chatterbox self until a
few weeks ago.
‘She was slowly fading away,’ he said.
Ms Morano lost a son to cot death when he was six months
old and left her husband in the first half of the last century after he beat
her.
She ‘abandoned the husband in the fascist era, when
women were supposed to be very submissive’, Dr Bava said in a 2015 interview.
‘She was always very decisive.’
She went on to support herself by working in a factory
making jute bags, then at a hotel, working way beyond the usual retirement age.
She also defied health advice, Dr Bava said on Saturday.
Some doctors had warned her against eating three eggs
daily, which she did for years, but she ignored their advice.
0 comments:
Post a Comment