What was the 'typical' profile of a doctor in nineteenth-century Trieste? Taking the period from 1860 onwards as a temporal reference, the Trieste doctor came from a middle-class family; often with Jewish origins, but with secular convictions, acculturated to the latest scientific innovations.
The training took place initially in Trieste, in close contact with a humanistic culture that looked to Italy, but accompanied by teaching in German for scientific subjects.
The aspiring medical student then cut his teeth at the University of Vienna; or to a lesser extent in Graz or Prague; and it was in the impetuous university years that the student acquired – often, but not necessarily – nationalist convictions.
The medical scene in Trieste thus presented, roughly from 1870 onwards, a group of doctors who considered themselves liberal-nationals, looking favorably on a Trieste of Italian culture, opposed to the 'legitimists', Catholics or Slovenians. It would be a mistake, however, to exacerbate this presumed national conflict, as was instead done by the historiography of the XNUMXs and XNUMXs. Rather, positivist enthusiasm for new discoveries, for new progress in the medical field, prevailed.

In this context, many of the doctors of imperial Trieste who would later go on to teach in Italy maintained ambivalent attitudes: irredentists, certainly, but each in his own way. Family lineage, often anything but Italian, played a curious role; and places of aggregation, starting from the gyms of the Società Ginnastica Triestina, passing through the cafés and the many cultural associations.

Alessandro Lustig Piacezzi was actually born as 'Leon Elissen'; a name that sounds very un-Italian and in fact looking at his parents one is not surprised. His father was Moritz Lustig, a Jewish merchant of mourning clothes from Hungary; his mother was a Segrè, also known as 'Nina'. Born on 5 May 1857, 'Leon' frequented in his youth "the irredentists of the Ginnastica Triestina"; and it was probably in the social gym that he converted to the Italian cause.
After attending high school, he enrolled at the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery at the University of Vienna. The Italian minority in the Austrian capital was quite large; there was a lively cultural climate that did not spare the students from rather violent political and national opposition. It should be remembered in this regard that the Pan-Germanists - the only national group within the empire that wanted its disintegration in favor of a 'greater Germany' - had their base precisely among the German university students. In this context of great tension 'Leon', now 'Alessandro', founded the Circolo Accademico Italiano (1881) which would see among its main intellectual figures of great importance such as Filippo Zamboni. The contacts with Trieste remained strong, because in the meantime he was elected member of the Board of Directors of Ginnastica Triestina. The studies continued with profit, because he worked as an instructor at the Institute of Physiology directed by E. von Brucke. After graduating (March 14, 1883) he moved to the University of Innsbruck where he worked as an assistant at the Institute of Physiology. He then moved to do research at various biological institutes in Vienna from 1884-1886, dedicating himself to in-depth studies of the nervous system, the muscular system, and the development of the sense of taste.

This interest in biology soon directed him towards a rapidly developing sector of medicine: bacteriology. He returned to Trieste just in time for a baptism of fire: one of the latest waves of cholera was raging in the city. Alessandro initially worked as a secondary doctor in the second medical division of the Civic Hospital, before being appointed director of the hospital of S. Maria Maddalena Superiore (1886). On this occasion he had the opportunity to study cases of cholera in collaboration with Vincenzo De Giaxa who would later become Professor of Hygiene in Naples. The good services rendered to the population of Trieste by fighting against cholera, however, encountered the obstacle of an irredentism that saw him as a friend of Giovanni Sabbatini, who in turn was in contact with a "certain" Guglielmo Oberdan. Following investigations by the Austrian Police, Lustig abandoned the city, taking refuge in Turin (1887). Here he quickly settled in, organizing the analysis laboratory of the Mauriziano 'Umberto I' Hospital on behalf of the surgeon Prof. Antonio Carle. His medical career, starting from the Piedmontese capital, experienced a decisive turn with a series of chairs, first in Cagliari and finally in Florence where he remained permanently.
Lustig's 'passion' remains infectious diseases; and in this capacity he travels to the most dangerous theaters of the globe. Initially in India, a British colony, where he tests a new experimental vaccine against bubonic plague; then moving to Manchuria, another bacteriological 'melting pot', and finally to Turkey, at the time the Ottoman Empire, and to South America, between Brazil and Argentina. The Kingdom of Italy, for its part, entrusts him with the task of organizing an anti-malarial campaign in the unbreathable lands of Sardinia.

Medical successes went hand in hand with political ones: first he was naturalized, acquiring Italian citizenship with the oath in the Campidoglio on June 3, 1891; then receiving the title of senator of the kingdom in 1911.
His marriage to Linda Piacezzi (1872-1911) allowed him to uproot himself, which he had fanatically pursued as a youth, by adopting the Italian Piacezzi as an additional surname. This Italianization did not happen by chance, but in the months following Italy's entry into the war with Austria. By now fifty-eight years old, Lustig left as a volunteer, first with the rank of major, then lieutenant and finally medical colonel, receiving three bronze medals during the four years of war. On this occasion, Lustig played a fundamental role in organizing (or rather: trying to organize) the health services at the front, with special reference to prophylactic measures to combat the spread of infectious diseases. The nationalist ardour died when his first-born son Renzo died in the trenches. During the years of conflict Lustig established and was an active teacher at the Military University of San Giorgio di Nogaro (Udine), founded specifically on 13 February 1916 to educate doctors and students in the fifth and sixth year of medicine who had not yet had experience of war surgery.

And it was during the experience of trench warfare in the Carso that Lustig first had the opportunity to observe the effects of toxic gases - phosgene, mustard gas, sneezing gas, tear gas - on infantrymen on the front lines. The commitment to combating their effects occupied him throughout his life, leading him to publish a volume that became the cornerstone of these studies in Europe: "The effects of poison gases and tear gas studied during the war: 1916-1918: measures and treatment". Published in 1921, it went through 4 editions. Among the translations, the one by the Polish Red Cross is noteworthy. The study of treatments for the damage caused by toxic gases also convinced him to found a Center for Clinical Pathology at the University of Florence in 1920 under the guidance of the Ministry of War.
As the scholar Luigi Massimino Sena recalls, the Florentine Clinical Pathology Center will then constitute an obligatory passage for 80% of Italian General Pathologists throughout the twentieth century. An important fragment of Italian medical history.

Sources:
Euro Bridge, Doctors of Habsburg Trieste: From Liberal-Nationals to Irredentists, in Medical Biographies – Journal of the center for the study and promotion of medical professions, number 2, 2013
Louis Maximinus Sena, On the Centenary of the 1915-1918 War. Remembering Alessandro Lustig: a General Pathologist and a Clinician who illustrated Italy, in Medical Biographies – Journal of the center for the study and promotion of medical professions, number 5, 2015.
Davide Ludovisi and Federica Sgorbissa, Trieste and Science. History and Characters, C. Giovanella, 2018

Zeno Saracino
Source: Trieste News – 17/12/2022