Clinical teaching, medical practice and medical policy (1876–1880). Paduan, Viennese and German medical schools in Ferdinando Coletti’s prolusion and Arrigo Tamassia’s report

The debate on the reform of medical studies occupies an important part of Itay's post-unification policy on university education. Clinical studies became crucial in medical education and in medical policy. Consequently, restoring dignity to the role of the doctor in the social context was crucial in order to be able to count on able medical officers all over the country. This study analyses the organization of clinical studies in leading medical Italian universities such as the university of Padua, an Italian centre of medical excellence since the Middle Ages, under the influence of German models such as the clinical schools of Berlin and the Viennese Medical School in late 19th century. The influence exerted by German medical culture on the Padua area and in Lombardy-Veneto has its roots in the second half of the 18th century. At the time, Johann Peter Frank, through the medical policy, contributed to imprinting the intervention of the state in the public health policies of the peninsula and to spreading the primacy attributed to clinical trials precisely by the public welfare policies of the German area. Paduan medical culture benefited from the German axis, in particular from the Wiener axis, rediscovering in the 1800s the anatomical-clinical tradition of Morgagni. In the broad debate on the role of clinical practice in medical education that developed across all universities of the kingdom of Italy after national unification, the proposal by Ferdinando Coletti at the university of Padua stands out. Coletti advocated for an organization of clinical studies inspired by the German clinical model, as detailed in the report by forensic physician Arrigo Tamassia, one of the principal proponents of the German university system and its application in Italy. This article focuses on the coeval sources: Ferdinando Coletti's inaugural academic year speech, "Della Universit & agrave; e de' suoi studi", published in 1880-a little-known sort of manifesto of clinical studies, with explicit reference to illustrious clinicians from Germany such as Theodor Billroth-and the comparative study of German and Italian clinical schools in the report of Arrigo Tamassia published in 1876. Clinical teaching became the topic of discussion and comparison between different medical education models in Europe-the German clinical model seems to have been the most attractive for Italian universities. In German medical departments, propaedeutic clinical and polyclinical studies were introduced in order to prepare students for the difficulties of medical clinical teaching. The debate focused on the possibility of applying this model to the Italian medical education system. The important node of this analysis is represented by clinical teaching in its various declinations-especially medicine-and it becomes the field in which medical-scientific, cultural, pedagogical, political and civil instances find solid ground for comparison and synthesis.