Il convegno celebra la visita in Veneto del 1764 da parte di John Morgan e ha l’obiettivo di saldare i rapporti con la Pennsylvania.
In quell’anno, infatti, John Morgan, giovane medico di Philadelphia fresco di laurea a Edinburgo, incontrò Giovanni Battista Morgagni a Padova. Passò i dieci giorni successivi a Venezia, per poi spostarsi a Vicenza. Tornato a Philadelphia in 1765, Morgan fondò la prima scuola di medicina e il primo college di medicina nelle colonie inglesi d’America.
Da allora, la medicina è andata incontro a un incredibile sviluppo, in termini di scoperte invenzioni e in relazione alla triade “Cura del paziente, insegnamento e ricerca”. Oggi gli Stati Uniti sono i primi al mondo nel campo della medicina, ed è nostro orgoglio sapere che la loro tradizione medica abbia avuto inizio proprio a Padova.
Il convegno è promosso dall’Accademia Olimpica di Vicenza, l’Università di Padova, la Perelman Medical School di Philadelphia e il Consiglio della Regione Veneto.
_______
The meeting (Padua – Vicenza – Venice • October 9 – 11) has been promoted by the Olympic Academy of Vicenza, the University of Padua, the Perelman Medical School of Philadelphia and the Veneto Region Council to celebrate Morgan’s visit in 1764 and to strengthen the relationship between the Land of Doges and the State of Pennsylvania.
The origin of Modern Medicine in the US has its roots in Padua.
On July 24, 1764 John Morgan, a young doctor from Philadelphia just graduated in Edinburg, met Giovanni Battista Morgagni in Padua. The visit to the old Morgagni (“still alert”) inspired the young Morgan. It was quite touching for me to find in the College of Physicians’ library in Philadelphia the original De Sedibus, which Morgagni donated to Morgan.
He spent the following ten days in Venice, “a city rising out of the waves of the sea”, fascinated by the palaces reflected in the Grand Canal, St. Mark’s Square, the glasses in Murano and the Arsenal. Finally, on August 7th 1764, he moved to Vicenza seeing the Theatrum Olympicorum and the Palladio Palaces.
Back to Philadelphia in 1765, he founded the first School of Medicine and the first College of Medicine in the English colonies. He established the need to attend a regular school before practising Medicine, thus delineating three distinct professional profiles: physic, surgeon and apothecary.
The same year he published “A Discourse upon the Institution of Medical Schools in America”, where he set the principles of Medicine as “The Guardian of life and health, against death and disease”, with a rigorous curriculum studiorum.
Since then a terrific development of Medicine occurred in terms of discoveries and inventions, according to the triad “Patient care, teaching and research”. Nowadays the US rank worldwide first in Medicine.