Epidemics and treatments in Milan over the centuries

The famous "black plague" of 1348 that depopulated Europe was almost not noticed in Milan, thanks to the drastic measures adopted and the health laws that were applied thereafter.

One in the vernacular suggests that "if it was a person who currently has the pestiffy condition, say this prayer over evil: “God destroys you and finally you strep and scatter you from this place and from all the other loci of the living men eradicates you”

The main defense against infectious forms was the infected isolation. Since 1087, the "unhealthy" hospital of San Lazzaro, known as the "Roman arch" for leprosy patients, had been in operation, welcoming those who came from the Via Emilia outside the city walls.

The need for separation during the plague, however, did not have an adequate response until the construction of the Lazzaretto in 1488: an immense construction of almost 400 meters on each side, with 280 rooms and a central area that could house temporary structures. 

During the so-called "San Carlo" plague of 1576, and again in 1630, the alternative to the Lazaretto was absentia: that is, segregation in the house (with the risk of dying of hunger rather than disease).

Ignorance attributed the spread of the infection to phantom "smearers", as described by Manzoni in the History of the infamous column.

The Register of those executed assisted by the brotherhood of San Giovanni decollato, also kept in the hospital archive, contains numerous other names of unhappy people, cruelly killed for a non-existent crime, in addition to Gian Giacomo Mora and Guglielmo Piazza.

If the modern age is plagued by syphilis, smallpox, petechial typhus and cholera, Milan is one of the most modern cities in Europe, even in terms of treatment.

In particular Luigi Sacco (1769-1836) is recognized as the promoter of smallpox vaccination in Lombardy, spreading its knowledge and application on a large scale in every way and arriving in 1809 to have vaccinated one and a half million inhabitants.

The medical director Pietro Moscati has wax models made to promote vaccination: a cow's breast, two horse's legs and the arms of a girl, and sends specimens throughout the Cisalpine Republic

The year following Louis Pasteur's discovery of the rabies vaccine, the "Committee for the assistance of bitten by hydrophobic animals" was set up at the Ospedale Maggiore in 1886, which initially financed the trip to Paris for the sick. 


To then create, in 1889, the Antirabic Institute, a vaccine production and inoculation center, under the guidance of dr. Remo Segré.

This was remedied with the construction of the Garbagnate Sanatorium, designed by the Municipality of Milan in 1911, and inaugurated in 1923; management was initially entrusted to the Ospedale Maggiore, which managed it until 1949. 

The invention of the artificial pneumothorax for the treatment of the disease, in 1888, is due to Professor Carlo Forlanini, who was also head physician at the Polyclinic.