Abstract
Autore:
Mazzarello Paolo
Titolo:
"Medicina. Un profilo nell´Italia unita, tra luci e ombre"
This paper outlines a profile of the history of medicine in Italy after the process of political unification at the beginning of 1860s. During the second half of the Nineteenth century emphasis has been placed on some of the major achievements obtained by the Italian medical doctors, like for example the discovery of the black reaction by Camillo Golgi (1873) which was a breakthrough for brain structure research, the discovery of the mosquito vectors of human malaria by Giovanni Battista Grassi (1898) which provided the scientific basis to fight the disease and the development of microscopy and other experimental and clinical procedures which were at the core of modern medicine. Moreover the article underlines the importance of the international student exchange programs to improve the level of the Italian biomedical community. The paper then follows the development of some important Italian medical schools during the Twentieth century, which were instrumental in shaping the profile of contemporary medicine in Italy, like for example those of Giuseppe Levi in Turin, Adriano Buzzati Traverso in Pavia and Naples, Vittorio Erspamer and Daniel Bovet in Rome and Giuseppe Moruzzi in Pisa. A section of the paper summarizes the difficult relationship between medicine, eugenics and racism during the fascist regime.
