Università e magistrature sanitarie: il progetto di Michele Buniva nel Piemonte napoleonico - University and Authorities of Public Health: Michele Buniva’s Project in the Napoleonic Piedmont

Abstract

Michele Buniva (1761-1834) is a prominent scientist in different fields of medicine and science at a time when medical teaching was under revision and the ideas on public health inherited from the Societé royale de Médecine of Paris and the Medical Police were beginning to be put into effect. Buniva was practising physician, teacher in University of Turin and administrator of public health from the end of Ancient Regime and the Age of Napoleonic Empire. He treated the subject of vaccination in the context of his or her own special interest. The success of vaccination as protection against smallpox stimulated interest in the phenomenon of life protection and, although its use long preceded the scientific knowledge required for its analysis by modern methods, the phenomenon was one which perfectly lent itself to the methodical chains of reasoning which are so much a part of intellectual taste in Europe. The principal body were the Consiglio di Sanità, leaded by Buniva who carried particular authority in health fields of Piedmont. Buniva gave theoretical and practical lessons on smallpox to students at the University of Turin, which collaborated with him to the introduction of Jenner's vaccine to Piedmont in 1800-1814.

Keywords: University of Turin, Small-pox, Public health, Vaccination