In the history of medicine, Gaetano Perusini is one of the names that keeps returning.
The record lists Gaetano Perusini as Italian psychiatrist (1879-1915).
Gaetano Perusini was born at Udine in 1879. His recorded nationality is Italy.
Anaesthesia, antisepsis and germ theory arrived within fifty years and made modern surgery possible for the first time.
The test of medical work is whether practice changed, not whether the argument was elegant.
That the work was done from Italy matters: hospitals, training and research funding are unevenly distributed, and they decide which questions can be asked.
Gaetano Perusini died in 1915, aged 36. What survives is the change in practice, which is how a medical life is actually measured.
