RAMAZZINI, BERNARDINO. - Born at Carpi (Modena) on 3 November 1633, died at Padua on 5 November 1714.
He studied under the guidance of the Jesuits, then went to Parma to complete his philosophical and medical studies, taking his doctorate in 1659. Having moved to Rome, he practiced in the hospitals under the guidance of A. M. Rossi; afterward he was a district physician at Canino and then at Marta; he then practiced medicine at Modena, where in 1682 he was elected primary professor of theoretical medicine at the University. From 1700 he taught in the second chair of practical medicine at the University of Padua. Having become almost blind, he nevertheless never interrupted his studies, helped by his grandsons in reading and writing. In 1708, appointed by the Venetian Senate rector of the College of Physicians, he was promoted to the first chair of practical medicine.
A member of several academies, he carried out his powerful scientific activity above all in clinical medicine, epidemiology, and physics. He was the first to give notice of artesian wells with the memoir De fontium Mutiensium admiranda scaturigine (Modena 1691), later translated into English; he studied the petroleum of Montezibio, also from the therapeutic and antiseptic point of view, and studied the effects of quinine. A precursor of Borelli's work on pressure, he invented the oblique mercury barometer; in his discourse Antiquitatis et novitatis studio medicus perfici, he affirmed the importance of historical-medical studies. In his fundamental work, the De morbis artificium (1700), immediately translated into German, R. anticipates by more than two centuries modern social hygiene for the protection of the health of workers in dangerous and thankless trades, thus forestalling modern measures in the field of hygiene and social medicine.
Bibliography3 works
Gustavo Maria Apolloni