The Fight Against Tuberculosis in the Mid-nineteenth Century: The Pivotal Contribution of Edoardo Maragliano (1849-1940)

The second half of the nineteenth century saw the development of new medical "specialties", which, like the idea of constitutional disease, had a profound influence on medical practice. Against this lively "backdrop", Edoardo Maragliano played a central role in medicine's "renaissance" in Italy. Having graduated in medicine in 1870 at the University of Naples, he worked as an assistant in the University Medical Clinic. After beginning his academic career as professor of pathology at the Faculty of Medicine in Genoa in 1877, he became full professor of internal medicine in 1881. While he studied all fields of internal medicine, his research focused mainly on tuberculosis.His experiments in the medical clinic enabled Maragliano to announce the possibility of immunization against Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Although criticized for using an inactivated vaccine, Maragliano continued to advocate vaccination with any type of vaccine.In the Senate of the Kingdom of Italy, Maragliano actively debated social, economic and sanitary questions, without neglecting his duties as a physician and professor. As an officer during the First World War, he organized military health services and taught medicine at the Military University of Padua.In 1924, Maragliano created the first Italian specialty school in the study of tuberculosis, which provided physicians with specific training in the diagnosis, therapy and prevention of the disease. His scientific zeal and his vision of modern medicine prompted the introduction of new specializations, such as radiology and, especially, pneumology, which led to the creation of one of Europe's most renowned medical schools.