La città degli igienisti. Riforme e utopie sanitarie nell’Italia umbertina [The city of hygienists. Health reforms and utopias in Umbertine Italy]

In 1989, Guido Zucconi published La città contesa (The disputed city), a book that quickly became a key reference for Italy’s planning historians. Here Zucconi traced the debates on cities in Italy between the late nineteenth century and the Second World War, focusing on the competition between important cultural and professional figures and the changing ways of understanding urban challenges. The book shows how early positivist approaches to urban reform based on statistical and medical knowledge over time were supplanted by approaches connected with the leadership of architects-planners, hybrid figures that had emerged from the newly created schools of architecture and capable of blending artistic, historical, and technical expertise. More than three decades after, in La città degli igienisti, Zucconi returns to the same topic by developing what was originally the first chapter of his inquiry, dedicated to the ‘hygienists’. His new research is a highly detailed and documented analysis of the emergence of urban hygiene in late nineteenth-century Italy, set within the context of European policies, practices, and theories. The work focuses on the reign of king Umberto I (1878-1900) and, more specifically, on the period during which Francesco Crispi was head of government (1887-91 and 1893-96). Under Crispi’s rule, Italy promoted several ambitious reforms regarding public health and hygiene, with the approval of a general law on the matter (1888) and the incorporation of a state direction and a specialization school. A key personality behind such initiatives was Luigi Pagliani, a professor at the University of Turin who defended the idea that ‘sanitary engineers’ were to become central figures in Italy’s newly designed system. These future experts – neither physicians nor engineers, but a mixture of both – were called to contribute to an all-embracing renovation of the built environment according to scientific principles. Over the course of the nineteenth century, public hygiene had been chiefly an urban issue. Italy was touched by several waves of cholera epidemics, which led, for example, to the approval of a hygiene law for Naples in 1885. The law put in place special measures to facilitate the demolition and reconstruction of urban sectors deemed unhealthy. Other municipalities were able to take similar measures, as this law was instrumental in the diffusion of neo-Haussmannian strategies of slum clearance. Zucconi shows how these interventions were supported by a plurality of tools for urban analysis and reform, such as the systematic collection of statistical information, the identification and mapping of emerging diseases, and the elaboration of new building regulations. The municipal reform passed in 1889 introduced specific competencies within city administrations, which were asked to draft hygiene regulations and put in place dedicated bureaucracies. The book offers a rich and nuanced analysis of Crispi’s reforms and the premises upon which they rested. It describes different aspects of the hygiene initiatives at the end of the nineteenth century in great detail, including activities connected to university chairs, congresses, associations, journals and scientific publications. It dedicates strong attention to medical academic practices and theories, showing that Italy’s path to hygienics emerged from the fields of physiology and pathological anatomy. Zucconi emphasizes the influence of Dutch physician Jacob Moleschott, who taught at the University of Turin from 1861 and promoted an experimental, evidence-based approach to the study of disease. The book also clarifies how the positions of Luigi Pagliani, one of Moleschott’s students, were far from unchallenged. Hygiene specialists such as Angelo Celli, for example, defended the alternative idea that public health should firmly remain a specialized sub-sector within medical research. In the field of urban planning, architects sensitive to historical and preservation issues, such as Camillo Boito, repeatedly opposed the insensitive attitude toward heritage displayed by sanitary schemes.