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Proposed in a gorgeous and uncut edition by the Documentation Centre for the History of Florentine Health and Assistance, the Regolamento dei Regi Spetali di S. Maria Nuova e di Bonifazio is the reprint of the original volume published in Florence in 1789 by the Grand Ducal printing house of Gaetano Cambiagi. This publishing venture can be considered one of the most important in recent years, at least in the field of sources and documents concerning Italian medical history and institutions.
The Regolamento, commissioned by Marco Covoni Girolami, Administrator of the florentine hospitals of Santa Maria Nuova and Bonifazio, was the peak of a series of interventions and experimentations started at the end of the Seventies by the Grand Duke Peter Leopold of Lorraine in the sector of public health and in the care system. The first important issue of this path was the Regolamento del Regio Arcispedale di Santa Maria Nuova di Firenze printed in 1783 (now available in digital format on Google Books), a new set of laws to epitomise and update the regulations given by the Lorraine Regency between the Forties and the Sixties. The plan completed in 1789 was thus not an isolated instance; it can be ascribed to longterm trends in progress inside the Grand Duchy, and on a continental scale, since the beginning of the century, based on more frequent intersections between the projects and demands coming from the medical intelligentsja and the demographic and health policies implemented by governments. The consequence of these shared interests was the gradual change of old care institutions in specialized health facilities, best suited in the welfare of the patients. Antonio Cocchi’s report of 1742 on Santa Maria Nuova (a. Cocchi, Relazione dello Spedale di Santa Maria Nuova di Firenze,a cura di M. Mannelli Goggioli, Firenze 2000) is the best starting point to focus on the evolution of hospital medicalization and the professionalization of medicine in Tuscany before 1789.
The reprint of the Regolamento, therefore, is an indispensable tool for scholars interested in exploring this topic in a crucial period for the birth of the modern hospital; it is also an enjoyable and evocative testimony for lay readers, and primarily for doctors, thanks to the fluency of the text, to the rationality of the “enlightened” rules, to the beautiful tables appended. The volume is well edited by Marco Geddes da Filicaia and Esther Diana, the authors of the two introductory essays. In the first one, Geddes presents an overview of the evolution of health and hospitals in Tuscany in the age of the Lorraine, emphasizing the importance of the relationship between Covoni Girolami’s administration of Santa Maria Nuova and the reformist activities of Peter Leopold. In this context, the Regolamento was the main product of those joint efforts, and the hospital can be considered as the main example of rationalization and medicalization for all care institutions in the Grand Duchy. In the second essay, Diana shifts the attention of the architectural history of the hospital. The research takes into account the issues and debates on “caring-curing”, alive since the early eighteenth century, clearly outlining the process of material transformation, and even more of the changes in the “moral economy” of the Santa Maria Nuova institution.
Although there are no full references to the relationship between the history of medicine proper, and the evolution of public health, the essays fit the Regolamento within an in-depth and updated scientific framework, both in terms of historical and historiographical analysis. Furthermore, the choice of a double introductory level, the cultural and insitutional implications of Geddes work on the one hand, and the physical and concrete landscape delineated by Diana on the other, is a good way to explain to a wider readership the various facets of this key text in the history of hospitals. The Regolamento, whose intellectual significance was already recognized at the time of its first publication, even today can not fail to offer a noteworthy contribute to the scholarly community and to the lay public.
The Regolamento, commissioned by Marco Covoni Girolami, Administrator of the florentine hospitals of Santa Maria Nuova and Bonifazio, was the peak of a series of interventions and experimentations started at the end of the Seventies by the Grand Duke Peter Leopold of Lorraine in the sector of public health and in the care system. The first important issue of this path was the Regolamento del Regio Arcispedale di Santa Maria Nuova di Firenze printed in 1783 (now available in digital format on Google Books), a new set of laws to epitomise and update the regulations given by the Lorraine Regency between the Forties and the Sixties. The plan completed in 1789 was thus not an isolated instance; it can be ascribed to longterm trends in progress inside the Grand Duchy, and on a continental scale, since the beginning of the century, based on more frequent intersections between the projects and demands coming from the medical intelligentsja and the demographic and health policies implemented by governments. The consequence of these shared interests was the gradual change of old care institutions in specialized health facilities, best suited in the welfare of the patients. Antonio Cocchi’s report of 1742 on Santa Maria Nuova (a. Cocchi, Relazione dello Spedale di Santa Maria Nuova di Firenze,a cura di M. Mannelli Goggioli, Firenze 2000) is the best starting point to focus on the evolution of hospital medicalization and the professionalization of medicine in Tuscany before 1789.
The reprint of the Regolamento, therefore, is an indispensable tool for scholars interested in exploring this topic in a crucial period for the birth of the modern hospital; it is also an enjoyable and evocative testimony for lay readers, and primarily for doctors, thanks to the fluency of the text, to the rationality of the “enlightened” rules, to the beautiful tables appended. The volume is well edited by Marco Geddes da Filicaia and Esther Diana, the authors of the two introductory essays. In the first one, Geddes presents an overview of the evolution of health and hospitals in Tuscany in the age of the Lorraine, emphasizing the importance of the relationship between Covoni Girolami’s administration of Santa Maria Nuova and the reformist activities of Peter Leopold. In this context, the Regolamento was the main product of those joint efforts, and the hospital can be considered as the main example of rationalization and medicalization for all care institutions in the Grand Duchy. In the second essay, Diana shifts the attention of the architectural history of the hospital. The research takes into account the issues and debates on “caring-curing”, alive since the early eighteenth century, clearly outlining the process of material transformation, and even more of the changes in the “moral economy” of the Santa Maria Nuova institution.
Although there are no full references to the relationship between the history of medicine proper, and the evolution of public health, the essays fit the Regolamento within an in-depth and updated scientific framework, both in terms of historical and historiographical analysis. Furthermore, the choice of a double introductory level, the cultural and insitutional implications of Geddes work on the one hand, and the physical and concrete landscape delineated by Diana on the other, is a good way to explain to a wider readership the various facets of this key text in the history of hospitals. The Regolamento, whose intellectual significance was already recognized at the time of its first publication, even today can not fail to offer a noteworthy contribute to the scholarly community and to the lay public.
Data recensione: 01/07/2011
Testata Giornalistica: Nuncius
Autore: Francesco Ciuti
