ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses Poor Relief, Enlightenment Medicine and the Protomedicato of Parma, 1748–1820. Historians tend to have high expectations when they approach the city and its duchy, given its 'Enlightenment' reputation. Although only a small portion of the Protomedicato's own records survive, we can learn much about its day-to-day activities during the period 1749–85 from the lively correspondence between two protophysicians and Giuseppe Camuti – and a succession of prime ministers. The Parma Protomedicato itself did not undergo reform until the Restoration. The 1790s saw it in a state of precarious limbo, exemplified by the 'provisional' pharmacopoeia it released in 1798. Historians of Parma still disagree on Ponticelli's contribution to reform. In what was to be his penultimate year as protophysician, 1768, Ponticelli was asked to reorganise the medical faculty's curriculum as part of the proposed reform of the university. Parma's protophysician was able to exercise considerable influence over the appointment of physicians and surgeons at the Misericordia.
