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Abstract

A review of the inaugural addresses held during half a century in Italy makes clear the image that the University professors of medicine wanted to present about themselves and their activities. They sang a hymn to science, the only admittable authority, by which useful and astonishing prodigies were performed. The annual addresses deliberately stressed those particular themes which would better illustrate past and present progress: surgical improvements, achievements in hygiene and dictates of preventive medicine, bacteriological 'revolution' etc. More and more the medical professors were claiming competences which should enlarge their field; they promised the just unified Italian nation that they would bring about a gradual but whole physical, moral and social "redemption".