Bruno Falconi’s research while affiliated with University of Brescia and other places

The increase in cases of patients needing to be admitted to intensive care, due to Covid-19 infection, has led to a strong imbalance between available resources and healthcare requirements. Therefore, the determination of further criteria, in addition to those of clinical appropriateness and proportionality of care, to define the allocation of the limited resources available was necessary. For these reasons, in March 2020, the SIAARTI (Italian Society of Anesthesia, Analgesia, Resuscitation and Intensive Care) published a document containing the “Clinical Ethics Recommendations for the Allocation of Intensive Care Treatments, in exceptional, resource-limited circumstances,” to relieve clinicians from a part of the responsibility in the decision-making process, which can be emotionally burdensome, carried out in individual cases and to make the allocation criteria for healthcare resources explicit in a condition of their own extraordinary scarcity.

Medicine in the second half of the nineteenth century takes on some characteristics of modernity. These characteristics are worthy of our attention because they help us to understand better some of the current problems of hygiene and public health. One of the topics that was most discussed in the scientific-academic milieu of the second half of the nineteenth century was cremation. There was a poetic precedent: the cremation of Percy Bysse Shelley (1792-1822). The earliest apparatus to completely destroy the corpse was made in Italy and Germany in the 1870s. As far as hygiene was concerned, the reasons for cremation were not to pollute the water-bearing strata and an attempt to streamline the cemetery structure. As in an apparent schizophrenia, scientists of the day worked to both destroy and preserve corpses. There is also the unusual paradox that when the first cremations took place, the corpses were first preserved then to be destroyed later. The catholic world (mainly in Italy) and forensic scientists opposed cremation. It was left to the hygienists to spread the practice of cremation. An analysis of scientific literature shows us that if we leave out the related forensic and ethical problems, recent years have seen attention paid to any harmful emissions from crematoria equipment which have poured into the environment. Another issue is the assessment of inadvertent damage which may be caused by the condition of the corpse. Some topics, however, such as the need for preventive autopsies (first proposed in 1884 in Milan) are still a subject of debate, and seem to pass virtually unchanged from one generation to the next.

Più di ottant’anni fa le cosiddette Leggi Razziali espulsero gli Ebrei Italiani dalle loro proprietà e da ogni luogo. Gli autori analizzano l’ergobiografia di salomone Enrico Emilio Franco, un anatomopatologo cosmopolita. Nato a Trieste, ma educato a Venezia, egli condusse la sua formazione medica a Padova, fu anatomopatologo all’Ospedale Civile di Venezia, per poi raggiungere il Portogallo. Franco fondò l’Istituto di Patologia Generale dell’Università di Lisbona. Studiò la leishmaniosi e si dedicò a ricerche di ematologia. Durante la Prima Guerra Mondiale combatté come volontario nel R. Esercito italiano. Fu poi professore di Anatomia patologia nelle Università di Sassari, Bari e Pisa, ma le cosiddette Leggi Razziali lo costrinsero a trovare rifugio in Palestina. Combatté come volontario per la creazione di Eretz Yisrael, ed indi diresse l’Istituto di Patologia della Hadassah a Gerusalemme.

The authors analyse descriptions of Greenlandic and Faroese medicine found in an Italian medical publication from the 18th century entitled, Europae Medicina a Sapientibus Illustrata […], which was printed in Brescia, in Northern Italy, in 1747. The author of these descriptions, Francesco Roncalli Parolino (1692–1769), was a renowned European physician. Roncalli Parolino focused his study on the treatment of scurvy and he promoted the inclusion of the Greenlandic and Faroese therapy into the broader European context. He was influenced to do this due to the already integrated European perspective of medicine which his book follows. Like now, medicine in 18th-century Europe was multicentric and characterised by rich intellectual activity, which contributed to the enhancement of clinical practice during this period. At the time, Greenland and Faroe Islands were also integrated into this European context because they contributed for medical-scientific development that would lay the foundations for modern medicine. Francesco Roncalli Parolino obtained just recognition for these regions through the advancement and defence of their valuable medical contributions.

BACKGROUND In the 1950s, occupational medicine and occupational psychology found a common field of action in the Clinica del Lavoro in Milan. OBJECTIVES This study aims to analyze and document how this encounter took place and, in particular, the contribution of the Clinica del Lavoro to the development of occupational psychology in Italy. METHODS Historical sources of that period were investigated. RESULTS Before the 1950s, experimental psychology was only taught at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan. The first professor of clinical psychology in the School of Medicine at the State University of Milan, was Marcello Cesa-Bianchi (1926-2018). He collaborated with the graphic, textile and pharmaceutical industries for the personnel training and management, and carried out important research in occupational psychology on behalf of the European Coal and Steel Community. The Chair of Clinical Psychology was initially located in the Clinica del Lavoro and the activity of the team of Cesa-Bianchi was oriented towards the elaboration of professional profiles and job analysis. In those years Cesa-Bianchi also conducted pioneering research in the field of psycho-gerontology. CONCLUSIONS The historical experience that integrated psychology and occupational medicine in the scientific context of Milan contains a series of values, useful to today's reflection and practice. Our work also undelines the importance of preserving historical documents: only a better knowledge of history can guarantee a better destiny.

Since the end of the 19th century, X-rays have been used to detect lung diseases. In Italy, 207,096 miniature chest radiographs were taken from 1941 to 1948. Traditional radiographs gave better results, but miniature chest radiographs were useful for screening. Indeed, the development of mobile miniature chest radiography units resulted in an improvement in mass X-rays screening for the detection of penumoconiosis. These mobile miniature units were mounted on a bus chassis, a solution that allowed to easily reach workers. The authors analyze some models of X-ray wagon units used by the "Clinica del Lavoro" in Milan in the 1950s. From the point of view of medical museology, the preservation of these devices requires appropriate spaces.

In 1864 in Milan, Giovanni Rosmini (1832-1896) opened an ophthalmic dispensary for workers. In 1874 this dispensary was transformed into the first ophthalmic hospital of the city. This hospital still exists today. The authors analyze a document that belonged to the lawyer Enrico Rosmini (1828-1898), brother of Giovanni, which helps to piece together the early years of the dispensary, where about 4,000 surgeries were carried out in the first four years of activity. This historical document is valuable as it sheds light on one of the first healthcare institution for workers in Milan.

«Work and health care in Milan, 1864-1874». In 1864 in Milan, Giovanni Rosmini (1832-1896) opened an ophthalmic dispensary for workers. In 1874 this dispensary was transformed into the first ophthalmic hospital of the city. This hospital still exists today. The authors analyze a document that belonged to the lawyer Enrico Rosmini (1828-1898), brother of Giovanni, which helps to piece together the early years of the dispensary, where about 4,000 surgeries were carried out in the first four years of activity. This historical document is valuable as it sheds light on one of the first healthcare institution for workers in Milan.