Medicine for the Poor in 18th and 19th Century Bologna

This chapter discusses Medicine for the Poor in 18th and 19th Century Bologna. In Bologna, as in many other towns of Northern Italy, medical care for the poor had been a widely acknowledged municipal responsibility, as testified by a great number of medieval and early modern patti di condotta – the hiring terms set down by contract when a community secured the services of a town doctor. In early modern Bologna, this collective responsibility for the care of the indigent sick was increasingly taken over by religious associations that acknowledged their duty to protect the physical as well as the spiritual well-being of their members: the confraternity and the parish. The expanding role of confraternities and parishes in medical poor relief was fuelled and financed by individual charity. Both confraternities and parishes were very successful in attracting legacies and donations for poor relief. In 18th-century Bologna the culture of Christian charity went hand in hand with the culture of aristocratic patronage.