Article ID: CBB001024730

Making Biomedicine in Twentieth-Century Italy: Domenico Marotta (1886--1974) and the Italian Higher Institute of Health (2011)

unapi

Cozzoli, Danielle (Author)
Capocci, Mauro (Author)


British Journal for the History of Science
Volume: 44
Pages: 549--574
Publication date: 2011
Language: English


This paper focuses on the role played by Domenico Marotta, director of the ISS (Higher Institute of Health) for over twenty-five years, in the development of twentieth-century Italian biomedicine. We will show that Marotta aimed to create an integrated centre for research and production able to interact with private industry. To accomplish this, Marotta shifted the original mission of the ISS, from public health to scientific research. Yet Mussolini's policy turned most of the ISS resources towards controls and military tasks, opposing Marotta's aspiration. By contrast, in the post-war years Marotta was able to turn the ISS into the most important Italian biomedical research institution, where research and production fruitfully cohabited. Nobel laureates, such as Ernst Chain, and future Nobel laureates, such as Daniel Bovet, were hired. The ISS built up an integrated research and production centre for penicillin and antibiotics. In the 1960s, Marotta's vision was in accord with the new centre-left government. However, he pursued his goals by ruling the ISS autocratically and beyond any legal control. This eventually led to his downfall and prosecution. This also marked the decline of the ISS, intertwined with the weakness of the centre-left government, who failed to achieve structural reforms and couple the modernization of the country with the democratization of its scientific institutions.

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Authors & Contributors
Cambrosio, Alberto
Santesmases, María Jesús
Anderson, Julie
Andretta, Elisa
Bala, Poonam
Bertolaso, Marta
Journals
Social Studies of Science
Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Journal of Economic Issues
科学史研究 Kagakusi Kenkyu (History of Science)
Technology and Culture
Publishers
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas
Cambridge University Press
Indiana University Press
Johns Hopkins University Press
Lexington Books
Palgrave Macmillan
Concepts
Biomedical technology
Medicine
Medicine and government
Medical technology
Nobel Prizes
Colonialism
People
Ochoa, Severo
Marotta, Domenico
Ramón y Cajal, Santiago
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
20th century, late
17th century
21st century
Medieval
Places
United States
Spain
China
Italy
Brazil
India
Institutions
Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Rome)
Rockefeller Foundation
U.S. Atomic Energy Commission
Istituto superiore di sanità (Italy)
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