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Giovanni Battista Monteggia
Giovanni Battista Monteggia was born in Laverno on the 8th of August 1762. He was a doctor, a surgeon and a professor of medicine. He was famous for his findings in the field of emergency medicine and surgery. He died in Milan on the 17th of January 1815.

Early life
Giovanni Battista Monteggia was born in Laveno, near the Lago Maggiore (northern Italy) on the 8th of August, 1762. His parents were Gian Antonio Monteggia and Marianna Vegezzi. Two brothers of his are known, one became a priest and the second a doctor. His father was occupied in the construction of infrastructures (mainly roads and aqueducts) and it was him who introduced Giovanni Battista, coming from an high school in Pallanza, to the field of medicine: Giovanni was admitted to the surgical school of the Ospedale Maggiore in Milan in 1779.His training was carried out on the background of the ideological and political conflicts of his time, between the revolutionary and the Napoleonic epoques. The political contest had huge influence on the sanitary field mostly because in those years, finally, the surgeon was becoming a recognized scientific and intellectual figure in the medical context. Those years were characterized by the rationalization and the reorganization of hospitals and in particular the ones of the Ospedale Maggiore of Milan, one of the most ancient on the Italian peninsula.Between the 18th and the 19th century, the role of doctors had been hugely transformed in the optic of a broader plan of reforms by the Austrian Empire. Before this season of reforms, professions in the field of medicine were divided into “majors” and “minors”: generally speaking, major medicine implied theoretical studies, practical medicine was instead considered minor. To the first category, “physical doctors” and “philosophical doctors” were mostly nobles who had received a classical education and had attended colleges and universities. These doctors had a speculative vision of medicine and their training was in charge of older doctors. These noble doctors were called to practice medicine in a noble or ecclesiastic environment. Their theories on medicine were just “thoughts” as the medical knowledge laid on centuries of traditional studies which included philosophical principles that could never be questioned. When called, the “physical doctors” did not have to inspect the patient at all: the surgical operation was left to the minor doctors considered “vile and mechanical”. They just limited to prescribing drugs or writing consults and orders which application was the responsibility of the practical doctors (surgeons and pharmacists).These latter, who were lacking a philosophical formation that colleges were giving only to the nobility, their training was carried out under the control of the respective corporation, with direct contact with patients in the hospitals. These figures were more alike to nurses than doctors. This separation in major and minor professions was inherited by the ancien règime: religion prohibited the usage of iron and fire on the human body as well as the dissection of corpses and nobility refused jobs that involved the usage of hands, claiming that those jobs were “vile and mechanical”.In order to solve this situation, the Austrian government, in the last years of Empress Maria Teresa reign, on the 29th of October 1770, promoted the foundation of a medical school open to a non-noble public, with specialities in various fields of medicine. In 1774, the “Regolamento per la medicina e la chirurgia” was enacted: this law signaled the end of major and minor professions and the control of the State over hospitals and other “assistance and caring” institutions. Thanks to this reform a new medical profession was born: one that linked the theory and the studies more advanced and updated to the practical side of the profession: the bed-side care of patients. It is the figure of the surgeon-doctor that identifies Monteggia.

Carrier
Monteggia started his studies in the anatomical field of medicine but was also interested in a wider biology: he practiced as a botanist and as a chemist under the supervision of Antonio Porati.On the 11th of June, 1781, Monteggia did the exam of “libera pratica di chirurgia” in the University of Pavia, where afterwards was to degree in medicine. His surgical studies would determine a vision of medicine as mostly clinical.His first medical publication was written in latin and published in 1789 in Milan, at the typography of Giuseppe Marelli, named “Fasciculi Pathologici”. This booklet is dedicated to Carlo Maria Taverna, priest of San Nazaro and member of the cabinet instituted by Giuseppe II in 1784 which had in charge the administration of ecclesiastic places. This text is a typical example of the anatomic-pathological culture derived by the teachings of Giovanni Battista Morgagni, who is really cited in this text. Examination on the corpse and in particular of its wounds, follows the clinical observation. This booklet begins with a nosological classification of pathologies in symmetrical and asymmetrical. Secondly, the author proposes a classical theme of italian anatomical research: the injuries of the head, with some first observations on the constitution and the function of the brain. There is also a traditional description of different cases of abscess.Monteggia, together with this publication, donated to the Cabinet of Anatomy of the University of Pavia, his most interesting anatomical pieces. For this action he was thanked with a letter on the 18th of December, 1793, by Johann Peter Frank. Also the Regal Magistrate thanked him with a dispatch that testifies the relationship with the principal scientific and medical lombard institution.In the 1790, Monteggia became surgeon-helper and afterwards anatomical engraver at the Ospedale Maggiore (Milan). Thanks to the support of Taverna, he managed to have a slab. Likely this was not a personal initiative: in 1971 the medical director Bartolomeo de Battisti reestablished the teaching of anatomy, in the optic of reconstituting medical schools. The same year, on the 4th of December, with a decree of the Court, Monteggia was nominated first surgeon of the Reign’s prisons. On the 20th of January, 1792, the Hospital Congregation gave Monteggia the assignment of giving free lectures of surgery to young surgeons. During the same year monteggia published the annotated translation of the compendium on venereal illnesses by the German author Johann Friedrich Fritze (original edition: Berlin 1790) in the printing house of Giuseppe Martelli. Later his own practical annotations on venereal diseases were published in 1794 at Giuseppe Galeazzi print shop. Dedicated to Moscati, the book displays a series of cases deriving from Monteggia’s direct clinical experience, being in contact with prostitutes and prisoners, and shows monteggia’s sensibility on the topic of ‘medical police’. The patients taken into account are mainly male. In this work Monteggia shows his interest and support towards the brow system. He was later on blamed for this weak spot and his ideology and position faded away. John Brown (1735-1788) believed that the organism, subject to continuous stimulus from the environment, was based on an equilibrium between being excited and excitability. In his opinion most of the diseases required a treatment based on strong external stimuli. Monteggia, strongly supporting Browns ideology, believed that venereal diseases could be cured by abstaining from intercourse: as a matter of fact in the Annotations Monteggia suggested to cure patients with a medical used plant known for its stimulating effects: the ‘salsapariglia’. It was soon discovered that this system was not only useless in the aim of curing the disease, but it often caused a worsening of the patient’s conditions bringing to intensive care that, provoking interferences with the nervous system, caused death. In 1794 Giovanni Battista Monteggia married Giovanna Cremona of Novara. The couple had five children, of which only three survived. Monteggia himself was a family man, yet, taken by his job, he never took care of domestic chores. He followed the education of his children but he never felt the delight of transmitting his passion to one of them. The advent of the Cisalpine Republic and of the Republic and Reign of Italy was a turning point in Monteggia’s life as he reached the peak of a short but fortunate carrier. He fulfilled several public positions, both of institution (he established special schools within different hospitals) and of public and military intervention (in 1808 he was called to examine the aspiring surgeons of the army). His tie with the elite of the French era has its testimony in the fortunate treatment of a great patient: Francesco Melzi d’Eril. The latter in 1795 appointed Monteggia to an annuity and remained in contact with him all his life. On the twelfth of September 1795 Monteggia was appointed professor of the institution of surgery at the Maggiore hospital, yet the actual teaching began only one year later. In 1798 he was nominated as the official doctor-surgeon of the of the security guard of the legislative assembly. During the same year his position as a teacher in the Maggiore hospital was confirmed and one year later he became obstetric surgeon at the Pia casa delle partorienti di S. Caterina alla Ruota. On April the second 1799, following an administrative order Monteggia became healthcare official for the prisons of the permanent army Council of the French army in Italy. He also was appointed for the inoculation of the smallpox vaccine. Nominated primary surgeon of the Maggiore hospital, he came back to ‘his’ hospital, where on the 30th of January 1800 he started lectures of surgery.

His works
In 1796 Monteggia had published the translation from German of the Obstetric Art of Georg Wilhelm Stein, yet leaving it without any commentary as he was very busy. He also started a collection of obstetric cases, but such a masterpiece is a textbook for surgeons composed to accompany the lectures at the hospital. The work obtained numerous reprints in Milan, Naples and Pavia. The first edition, in five volumes, was published in Milan at Pirotta e Maspero, between 1802 and 1805. The second edition, in eight volumes, was revisited by Monteggia between 1803 and 1806 and published at Maspero and Boucher. The book was praised by various critics and reviewers. In particular Antonio Scarpa who hoped to see Monteggia teaching clinical surgery at Pavia after him (letter of the 24th of February 1805). Monteggia had also prepared a translation of his work into Latin in order to make it accessible to an international audience. The institutions, born as a text for the use of students, propose broader ambitions in the second edition. In addition to the theories of John Brown, Monteggia takes up, with many reservations, the doctrine of the 'controstimolo' by Giovanni Rasori, of which he attempts an application in the surgical field, although, as we read in the Preface to the second edition of the work, he is not fully convinced. His main source of inspiration is the work of the Scottish surgeon John Hunter, but he knows and uses contemporary scientific literature, and in particular periodical publications. In fact, it proves to be a clinician attentive to practice than systemization, with a specific sensitivity to pharmacology. In addition to the usual surgical arguments, he is among the first to accurately describe polio from a clinical point of view. But his focus is particularly on orthopaedics. In particular, it provides valuable descriptive contributions to the pathology of the locomotor apparatus especially for the part concerning traumatology. Before others, he studies and describes the vices of gait (lameness) that he calls "dilombamento o sfiancamento". It makes the technique of dressing wounds and sores easier and perfects the devices in use to treat fractures and sprains. He divides dislocations into perfect and imperfect (subluxations). He ties his name to the eponymous fracture and hip mooning. The first with a description of the fracture of the ulna's 1st of the fin associated with the anterior dislocation of the radio capital. The second is due to the dislocation of the head of the femur near the anterior-upper illic spine. Monteggia is always intent on learning from corpses the weaving of the body and to reveal from the bowels the hidden secrets of diseases. Always he writes down observations of clinical signs at the bedside of patients; in reading his memoirs there are also faithfully recorded the wrong care and, even the diagnostic errors that happened to him in the long exercise of the profession, in which, who is most worth it, the less mistakes he makes; as Hippocrates himself claimed. Monteggia died before completing his work, of which he had designed a ninth volume dedicated among other things to electricity, vaccination, and a systematic treatment of the surgical pharmacopoeia. In 1813 he became a member of the reborn Institute of Sciences, Letters and Arts in Milan. He was himself a contributor to the Journal of the most recent medical literature in Europe and to the New Journal of Medicine and Surgery in Milan. He collected a rich library.

Late life
Monteggia is working on the latest edition of the "Surgical Institutions" when it is struck by night fevers that, however, do not distract it from its work and from the care of the sick; he is suffering from erysipelas that spreads from his right ear to the whole face and, despite the care of his colleagues, dies on the night of January 17, 1815 and he finds burial at the cemetery of Porta Romana; his remains, already unearthed, are exhumed again at the demolition of the cemetery and renowned at the Monumental Cemetery of Milan on April 27, 1875. In the atrium of the Maggiore hospital was erected in his honour a monument, now lost, which inspired, among other things, a sonnet to Carlo Porta. A bust of Canovian style was saved, due to the sculptor Camillo Pacetti. The Policlinic of Milan, as a gesture of solemn respect towards Monteggia, dedicated to him the Pavilion of Surgery in 1929.