History – Faculty of Medicine in Rijeka

From the history of medicine in Rijeka and the Faculty of Medicine

Introduction

The histories of great and complex institutions never start at the moment of their foundation. Thus, the establishment of the Faculty of Medicine in Rijeka may be regarded as a culmination of the maturation of the environment and its readiness to transform practice into higher education. To recall the many phenomena, personalities and actions that contributed to raise inhabitants’ awareness, to improve their quality of life and to establish Rijeka as a respected centre of medical science and profession, means not only to appreciate the past and its protagonists, but is also rather essential for understanding the reasons for development of the institution. The generations that spend their best years studying at or collaborating with the Faculty of Medicine should know that they can be proud to belong to such a rich medical tradition.

XV–XVI century: first surgeons, physicians and hospitals

The first surgeons with a proper education in Rijeka were maestro Jacobo di Giorgio and Tomaso di Giovanni from Venice, mentioned around 1440. Around this period, the hospital in Rijeka was mentioned for the first time too. Kobler wrote about a 15th-century hospital “in the district of St. Sebastian”, and Grmek mentioned the opening of the Holy Spirit Hospital in 1441. In 1529, Antonio Senato from Ancona became the municipal physician, probably the first doctor with a university education in Rijeka. One year later, in 1530, Rijeka got its Statute that contained a lot of hygienic-epidemiological regulations (punishment for polluters, a defined place for waste disposal, surgeon’s obligation to report an injured person to the authorities, etc.). In 1572, the Town Council decided to introduce new taxes on wine and oil to maintain the Holy Spirit Hospital that was moved to a location near the Church of the Assumption of St. Mary. That year is considered to be the year of foundation of the Rijeka hospital.

XVIII century: hygiene, quarantine and first great names

While the 17th century was characterised by the fight against various epidemics (and by the struggle of the Town Council to attract the best doctors to Rijeka), the 18th century brought a swifter development of the health facilities in Rijeka. After gaining the status of free port (1719, at the same time as Trieste) and with the inflow of Dutch and English capital, which led to the establishment of the sugar refinery, the town began to grow, and in 1777, it had more than 5,000 inhabitants, including subdistricts. In 1815, the number of inhabitants reached nearly 9,000. But the inflow of people and goods increases the risk of an epidemic spreading. The St. Carl lazaretto in the port of Mandrać (where the fire brigade is located today) was established back in 1722–1726 and served as a bulwark against the plague until 1812. After the lazaretto had been shut down in 1812, the quarantine was temporarily moved to a nearby place Kraljevica. The St. Carl lazaretto was soon re-activated between 1814 and 1816 under the supervision of Vicenzo Medina, and after that, the ships were quarantined in Martinšćica, where the new St. Francis lazaretto had been founded in 1833, primarily for protection from cholera. The Martinšćica lazaretto was architecturally the “Monarchy’s most modern building of its kind” until the third lazaretto was built in Trieste in 1869.

Following the example of Trieste, Rijeka became a refuse cart in 1754. The provisions from that time clearly regulated some issues like the yearly cleaning of the entire “sewage system” of the town (fosso della Città), the urgent installation of toilets in larger buildings, the weekly sweeping and removing of dirt from in front of the shops, the prohibition against keeping animals in the town (except horses), removing horse manure from the streets, the prohibition against throwing dead turtles or other carcasses onto the streets or into the sea. Anybody who wanted to produce olive oil at home had to collect the dirt and the filthy water and transport them into the sea at their own expense. In 1769, a prohibition was issued against burials around the churches.

Until 1752, healthcare came under the jurisdiction of the Town Council, which issued licenses to protomedics (renewed by election every three years), midwives, pharmacists and surgeons. The harbour master, who was at the same time the “health chancellor”, made decisions about quarantines for ships and supervised them if necessary. In 1752, healthcare came under the jurisdiction of the State, the Health Council (“magistrat”) was established and a health building (“kasino”) with offices was built in the harbour with a “minister” (manager), a chancellor (clerk) and guardians (inspectors under oath). Ships that came from infected areas (with “unclean” documents) were put into quarantine in the lazaretto. If there were no cases of disease after the quarantine, the goods could be sold. But in case the disease broke out again, the quarantine was always counted from the day of the outbreak. For better control of the quarantine, guardhouses (“kažoti”) were located along the coast.

In 1785, a hospital was also established on the other side of the river Rječina, in the part of town called Kortil in Sušak (today, it is the location of the Croatian Cultural Centre).

Other significant personalities in healthcare in Rijeka at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries were chemist Antonio Michelazzi (1733–1820), author of a textbook about mineralogy and later a professor in Gorizia, who claimed that the supposed curative properties of precious stones were merely a superstitious belief, and physicist Giuseppe Zanchi (1710–1786), later a professor in Vienna and author of a physics manual that was printed in more editions. They were both Jesuits priests and wrote about medicinal herbs, human anatomy, the effects of minerals and about pharmacy in general.

During the 18th century, two graduates from Vienna, Carlo Pisanello and Francesco Summacampagna, came to Rijeka, even though there were already three pharmacists in the town (Bertossi, Cortiva and Veronese). The first qualified dentist (chirurgo-dentista) in Rijeka was Gaetano Pierini, who came from Dubrovnik in 1786, where he had lived and practised between 1777 and 1785 after his studies in Italy. Other dentists, Natan Garfung and Isak Löwy, came in 1800 and 1803, respectively, but dental care only became more widely used after 1850.

Saverio Graziano (1702–1780), a great obstetrician and gynaecologist from Barletta in Apulia, was appointed as the first “head of the army corps” in 1754 (at that time, there were three doctors in Rijeka). He was the author of the first scientific medical paper on mercury therapy (De usu mercurii) in this area which was appraised even by van Swieten. Graziano, who won recognition for fighting the plague in Rijeka in 1740 and malaria in Lovran in 1760 and for his description of the earthquake in 1750 (he argued that the water after the earthquake should be boiled), educated midwives and issued them with certificates of competence. The first proper school for midwives was established in Rijeka in 1786. The supervisors Giacomo Cosmini and Giovanni Carrobi (Graziano’s son-in-law) produced a theoretical-practical handbook in Croatian. Josip Mašić succeeded Graziano as the city doctor and the head of healthcare (phisicus urbis et capo sanitatis) in 1780. Since he was in charge of organising and supervising the lazaretto and the quarantine, today we consider him, together with Graziano, as the first maritime medicine professional.

Until the end of the 18th century, doctors came to Rijeka mostly from the Venetian Republic and the Kingdom of Naples after studying at Italian universities. The new laws, however, stated that practitioners should take exams at Austrian (or Hungarian) universities. Three doctors who succeeded Graziano (Mašić, Feliks Segher and Cosmini) tried to change that law, but without success.

Just like today, back in the 18th century, there were people who would leave Rijeka to study and then forget about their hometown while pursuing successful careers abroad. Nikola Toma Host (1761–1834), doctor of medicine and botany, left his home in the Kastav region to become a Vienna university professor and a doctor at the Habsburg court. Bartol Patuna (1738–1823) was a descendant of a settler from Crete, a grandson of Bartolomej, a surgeon practising in Rijeka and Rovinj and a son of Nikola, a Rijeka chief surgeon (lived 1704–1791, in Rijeka since 1727). After serving his apprenticeship at Morgagni in Padua and at van Swieten in Vienna, he fought the plague in Bosnia. After that, he remained the first doctor in Gradiška on the river Soča until his death. He attracted the interest of medical circles with his dissertation, in which he described a rare case of extrauterine pregnancy and gained further repute with his papers on cattle plague and child diseases. These ideas might be considered rather na/ ¨ve from our perspective today, but they were pretty advanced for that time. Because of his scientific work, his name entered the French and German medical lexicons, and because of his local reputation, he was ennobled and became a member of the Rome-Soča Academy. He was closely bound to Gradiška, which we know from the fact that he wrote a book on the local climate and that he kept refusing Graziano’s invitations to come to Rijeka. But nevertheless, Patuna still spread the word about his Rijeka origins (although he was not aware of it): in the dissertation (Epistola physico-medica ad J. B. Morgagnum continens historiam foetus sine involucris extra uterum inventi, placenta intra uterum haerente), printed in Vienna, he was marked as “Liburnus Fluminensis”.

XIX century: Škrljevo disease and worldwide fame

By a decision of the Town Council in 1821, the Holy Spirit hospital was moved together with the almshouse away from the cramped Old Town into the newly bought building of the former wax factory, Massa Cavalli e Licudi. The first mental hospital in the South Slav area was built in its garden, where a chapel with an altar painting of the Holy Spirit was also erected. The newly located hospital (at that time called Zagrad, today vis-a`-vis the location of the Faculty of Maritime Studies) was inaugurated on 1 July 1823 in the presence of the governor, Ferencz Ürmény. “The General Institute for the Poor” (Istituto generale dei Poveri) was supposed to give shelter to the poor and the sick, to support illegitimate children, to organise craftsmanship training for young people and to encourage the city to forbid begging. The institute was merged with the Holy Spirit hospital in 1824. Although the hospital was funded by many distinguished personalities, the turning point concerning its financial prosperity was in 1835 when the Rijeka doctor Giovanni Battista Cambieri bequeathed his entire fortune to the hospital, which ensured its enlargement, financial support for the poor, establishment of the first Rijeka dissecting department in 1837 and the purchase of additional land.

Giovanni Battista Cambieri (1754–1838) from Torre del Mangano in Lombardy (today Certosa di Pavia) came to Rijeka in 1797 after studying in Pavia and practising in his home town (from where he fled to Austria to escape the French). At the beginning of the 19th century, Cambieri also practised in the region of Škrljevo. At the end of the 18th century, Škrljevo became known throughout Europe for the emergence of an until then unknown disease, which spread so fast that the number of infected people allegedly reached 13,000 by the mid-19th century (which was more than one-third of the population of the region, as Cambieri and Bagneirs, head of the French army medical corps in the Illyrian Provinces, reported to the Paris Medical Academy). The first written report of the disease, which was later to serve as a subject for some dissertations in Padua (Santes, de Moulon, Rizzi) and Vienna (Melzer), was submitted to the city authorities on 28 June 1800 by the chief doctor Josip Mašić who suggested that this could be a case of (endemic) syphilis, which was generally accepted afterwards. After getting official permission to experiment with the “Škrljevo disease” therapy (morbus de Scharlievo), Cambieri tried to contain it together with the Pest dermatologist Stahly. The epidemic caused real panic from time to time. Among other measures, quarantines were opened in Kraljevica and Bakar, and medical circles throughout Europe speculated about the nature and origin of the disease. Although the city of Rijeka was notably less struck by the disease than its surroundings, Lagneau called it “mal de Fiume” (Fiume is the Italian name for Rijeka) in his famous book on syphilitic diseases, and Antonio Carlo Lorenzutti wrote in his graduation thesis, which he defended in 1830 in Padua, about “lues flumicensis” (sic!). Cambieri’s career will always be closely connected with the Škrljevo epidemic. In 1818, already working as an intern in the Holy Spirit Hospital, and soon after to become a patrician city councillor and the first doctor of the Illyrian coast, Cambieri earned his medical fame with his thesis on the Škrljevo disease (Storia della malattia detta Skrielievo ossia di una particolare forma di sifilide, manifestatasi in alcuni distretti del Litorale Illirico). As a cure for this disease, Cambieri suggested mercury- and zinc-sulphide fumes. His paper on the curative properties of galvanism (Dell’azione del fluido elettrico o del galvanismo come medicamento) was based on the latest medical experiments and discoveries.

In May 1828, “the Council of the particularly faithful, free, trade town and the free port of Rijeka” announced the position of chief doctor to succeed Cambieri in newspapers in Vienna, Buda, Milan, Venice and Trieste, offering a yearly salary of 600 forints. The candidates, who had to submit their applications by the end of June 1828, were also supposed to enclose a certificate of age and knowledge of Italian, a certificate of their medical school qualification and a description of their former work experience. Out of fourteen candidates, five were short-listed and Girolamo Fabris was finally selected.

In the second part of the 19th century, medicine in Rijeka was further institutionalised and standardized. Giovanni Spagnolo, a doctor in the children’s asylum and a puericulture pioneer, issued in 1842 a didactic handbook Igiene del bambino. Ivan Dežman (1841–1873), doctor and writer, father of Milivoj Dežman, pneumonologist and a modernist writer, published a Dictionary of Medical Terms in 1868. At the same time, the publication of the health journal “Rvacki prvenci o naravi i zdravlju”, which had been founded in Vienna by Đuro Augustinović, commenced in Rijeka. It is generally considered that the ambulance service in Rijeka was founded in 1882 (and therefore one year earlier than the equivalent service in Vienna), and the Associazione Medica was established in 1886 (The Association of Doctors for the coastal region of Kvarner and Gorski Kotar in Sušak was founded in 1937, although Nikola Venchiarutti was already the first municipal doctor in 1888. The association of dentists was founded in 1909.). The fact that physicist Peter Sacher, a teacher at the Military Maritime Academy and an associate of Mach and Riegler in researching ultra-quick photography, presented the X-ray in Rijeka in February 1896, only one month after its discovery, shows that at the end of the 19th century Rijeka was in line with the contemporary European scientific trends. On that occasion, the first roentgenogram in Croatia was made on the hands of baroness Vranyczany, which speeded up the acquisition of an X-ray machine for Rijeka hospital.

The clinicians who worked in Rijeka in the 19th century can be considered to be authorities of European renown. The oldest among them was Antonio Felice Giacich (Lovran, 1813–Rijeka, 1898), who studied medicine in Padua and came to Rijeka in 1842. Since 1852 he had taught maritime medicine at the Kraljevica naval academy and practised in the the Holy Spirit Hospital, being also its director for a period of time. Giacich was distinguished by his versatile medical interests. His most important contribution to science and practice was definitely his textbook of maritime medicine, Lezioni mediche per i naviganti, in five editions (1855–1887) that gained recognition even beyond Austro-Hungary. Giacich published essays on “Škrljevo disease”, on medicinal herbs and the curative scents used in Istria and Dalmatia, on cholera, plague, mushroom poisoning, tobacco and many other topics. He is generally considered to have been the originator of infectology in Rijeka, a promoter of balneoclimatology and the pioneer of alternative medicine.

Gjuro (Georg) Catti (1849–1923) graduated from the School of Medicine in Vienna, where he also started to practise, first in the general hospital and then as an assistant in the clinic for chest and throat diseases headed by Professor Leopold Schrötter von Kristelli. In 1876 he became an “active member” of the Vienna Doctors Association. After rejecting an invitation to establish a clinic for otolaryngology in Innsbruck, he applied for the position of chief doctor of internal medicine in Rijeka in 1879. He worked here in the town hospital and in a private practice; he was a member of the Health Council for the Hungarian-Croatian maritime district and was active in fighting the cholera epidemic of 1886. While taking pioneering steps in the development of practical paediatrics, Catti worked together with Rijeka doctor Franjo Kresnik who was also famous as a violin constructor. Catti subsequently retired to his his estate in Begunje near Bled in Slovenia, where he died in 1923. He was buried at the Kozala cemetery in Rijeka. Gjuro Catti was primarily an internist and a rhinolaryngologist, but he had also actively promoted climatotherapy on Kvarner. His most important contribution to medicine are the inventions that fostered this profession, like the instrument to remove adenoidal tissues (a type of tongs, a copy of which is being used even today at the clinic for otorhynolarygology in Rijeka) and ring-like spoons (cochlea) which are used in dermatology. With his publications and papers for scientific congresses he made a special contribution to the diagnosis of cancer of the larynx and to the surgical techniques of the upper respiratory tract.

Probably the greatest clinician at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries was Antonio Grossich (Draguć in Istria, 1849–Rijeka, 1926). He studied medicine in Vienna and worked for many years as a municipal doctor in Kastav. After a short career at the Surgery Department in Innsbruck, he came as chief physician to the Rijeka Holy Spirit Hospital in 1886. His greatest achievement was definitely the introduction of the presurgical disinfection of the shaved area with iodine tincture. The idea of using iodine occurred while working on the injuries of port workers. He used the tincture for the first time in 1907, and two years later, he delivered a paper about it at the international congress in Budapest. Due to his success at saving many lives by introducing a package that contained sterile gauze and an iodine vial into the army kit, the Italian government gave him a commendation in 1912, and Rijeka issued a postage stamp carrying his profile in 1919.

XX century: a well of political and medical ideas

Great names and achievements continued to be a part of medicine in Rijeka in the 20th century. The first institution for preventive medicine – the Royal Hungarian Station for Chemical Research – was founded in Rijeka in 1900 and remained active until the end of World War I. The Sušak district doctor Ivan Kiseljak (1853–1915) (through the Movement of Croatian Abstainers), together with the Capuchin monks Bernardin Škrivanić and Dragan Dujmušić (through the Catholic “Holy Army” temperance association) published didactic handbooks about fighting alcoholism. Precise and strict regulations in the Statute for wells, channels, public baths and keeping clean water for drinking, washing and other purposes in Modruško-riečka county (Štatut za zdence, nakapnice, kanale, javna kupališta, a obdržavanje čistoće vode za piće, pranje i inu upotrebu u području županije modruško-riečke) from 1912 show a high level of public health consciousness. Lionello Lenaz (Rijeka, 1872–Lovran, 1939) came to Rijeka after studying medicine in Vienna and worked for six years as assistant to a neuroanatomist Obersteiner, a neurologist Benedict and a chemist Ludwig. He also worked as a guest assistant with an internist Neusserr, a pathologist Weichselbaum, and Landsteiner, who later won a Nobel Prize. Lenaz was invited to come to Rijeka and to take over supervision of the new bacteriological laboratory and dissecting department in 1901. In 1919 he became chief physician at the Holy Spirit hospital; in 1924, he earned the title of private docent (libero docente) and taught haematology, nephrology and neuropathology at the University of Padua from 1927–1930. The Academy of the Kingdom of Italy awarded him with the title Gran Ufficiale in 1937, and he also received a gold medal for science. Lenaz did not deliver many papers, but we can say without exaggeration that some of them revolutionised clinical science and practice. His first publication (1901) on ataxia introduced the idea of static innervation (tonus), which plays a significant role for voluntary movements. It seems that this idea came significantly before the similar concepts of Strümpell and Edinger. Particularly important are his works on chorea, pathogenesis of pernicious anaemia, embryonic haematogenesis, as well as on leukaemia, which he proved is based not on simple hyperplastic but on neoplastic changes.

The turn of the 19th and 20th centuries was a period of vivid medical activity in nearby Opatija as well, which became a world-renowned centre for climate thalassotherapy. Some prominent medical names were active at that time, like Julius Glax (1846–1922), a university professor, the author of the balneology textbook and the head of the Opatija Sanatorium board, or docent Ante Grgurina (1877–1922), a former Graz Medical School student and a post-war manager of the Rijeka town hospital. During Doctors’ Week in Opatija in September 1927, he explained his so-called hipselophony method for the examination of pulmonary patients. This method should reveal pleural discharge and other anomalies that change the quality of the sound coming from the chest when scratching on the front of the thorax and listening on the back. Géza Fodor (1867–1927), a lecturer from Pest and inventor of the Marina cocktail, also worked in Opatija as well as the pharmacist Sternbach who invented the ovolecitin tablets Ovol. Later on and far away from Opatija, his son Leo was to synthesise diazepam – a much more significant medicine. The Hungarian paediatrician Kálmán Szegó (1863–1933) was manager of the sanatorium for children, and Otto Lenz, one of the Koch’s assistants during the eradication of malaria on the Brijuni islands, also practised in Opatija for some time. Theodor Billroth (1829–1894), a friend of Georg Catti who used to spend much time in Opatija and finally died there, also visited the Rijeka town hospital where he performed surgeries. Max Joseph Örtel (1835–1897), a Bavarian professor of internal medicine who invented the laryngostroboscope and discovered the forms of the diphtheria bacillus, designed walking paths for patients in Opatija and thus transformed the town into the Terrain-Kurort. Leopold Schrötter von Kristelli, the founder of the first department of laryngology in Vienna, wrote about the curative properties of the Opatija aerosol, and Robert Virchow wrote about vegetation in Opatija. Hermann von Helmholtz and the Nobel Prize winners Otto Loewy and Emil von Behring also visited Opatija.

At the very beginning of the 20th century, brothers Antonio and Costantino Brancheta, the inheritors of the rich Rijeka tradesman with cylinders and straw hats, offered a donation of 460 thousand krone to the Town under the condition that the sum should be used for building a new almshouse. The mayor Francesco Vio accepted the donation and bought a piece of land for the municipality in the area called Nad lazaret in October 1903. On the architectural competition that was organised, the project “Aria e luce” (“Air and light”) by a young Rijeka architect Carlo Pergoli was chosen as the best solution. The building of the almshouse started in 1904 and was finished and opened in 1908 despite financial and other difficulties (the Branchetta brothers had to add 90,000 krone). The almshouse offered accommodation for 70 male and 70 female inmates as well as for 30 boys and 30 girls. A chestnut-tree alley led to the building that was surrounded by a park with workshops and outhouses. After its destruction during the war, the building was renovated in 1924. In 1933 a children’s colony was built in the part of the town called Kantrida, which is the location of today’s children’s hospital.

World War I destroyed whole countries and, logically, also their institutions. As a result, the Military Naval Academy in Rijeka was closed after the war, and its buildings and land were given to the municipality for reconstruction as a general town hospital. Evacuation of the Holy Spirit hospital from the old location in Zagrad started immediately after the war, but it lasted until the mid-1930s. The intern’s department was moved first, then the psychiatry department, while the opening of the new surgery department was postponed because of the lack of elevators for patients’ beds. At the end of 1924, the hospital got the first modern electrocardiograph unit purchased in France. In April 1926, the Government allocated the building of the former military hospital (the old lazaretto) to the municipality, and in 1929 the town hospital became a legal entity. At that time, the psychiatry department was supervised by 33-year-old Giovanni Dalma from Rijeka, who founded a medical faculty in Argentina after World War II.

In the period between the two world wars and after establishing the border along the river Rječina, the part of the town called Sušak also gained the status of a town, which led to its strong economical development, the ambition to compete with Rijeka and the need to be independent of Rijeka in every area, including medicine. The new Sušak or Banovinska hospital was built by the end of 1934. This hospital recruited a number of excellent experts who would later continue to set the pace of medicine in Rijeka. Silvije Novak (1900–1988) came as a young specialist in internal medicine from Zagreb where he had already published the first textbook on haematology in Croatian together with Botteri. After a couple of months, Zdravko Kučić joined him in Sušak hospital. After the evacuation of the hospital in 1942, Silvije Novak returned to Zagreb to become a university professor in 1950. Velimir Guteša became head of the new Sušak hospital in 1935, but he was soon succeeded by the ophthalmologist Andrija Car. Janko Komljenović, who was an assistant to Budisavljević in the Rebro hospital in Zagreb, took over the surgery department, and Milan Berger, who was an assistant of Franjo Durst in Zagreb, became head of the gynaecology department. The heads of the departments were Jakov Bakotić (otolaryngology), Niko Bonetić (dermatovenerology) and Lujo Križ (rendgenology), while the assistants were Zdravko Kučić (internal medicine), Petar Župan (surgery), Davor Perović (gynaecology) and Ante Vukas (dermatovenerology). Sušak hospital was renowned at the European level not only because of its architectural and functional organisation, but also because of the expertise of its personnel.

Viktor Finderle (1902–1964), a Zagreb student and obstetrician who practised in Opatija until the war, continued to work in Rijeka after World War II. His invention of the vacuum extractor, a device that helps pull out the foetus during birth, made the name of Rijeka famous in the early 1950s. He got the idea for his invention while watching an octopus sticking to a rock. Although Finderle’s vacuum extractor was later replaced by a technically improved extractor by Malström from Sweden, its mention in leading European journals and the correspondence of experts worldwide ensured a place in the history of medicine for this invention and the Rijeka Faculty.

At about the same time as the invention of the vacuum extractor, Ante Vukas found a new way of examining the skin, the so-called epidermotectoscopy, which implies tangential cutting of the epidermis and the native microscopic surveillance of such slide. This method was first published in 1950, and it has received acknowledgements by many authorities.

Valter Rukavina (1896–1972) came from Rebro Hospital in Zagreb in the summer of 1946. He studied medicine at Innsbruck, Graz and Vienna and graduated in Prague. As a specialist in infectious diseases, his most significant contribution was in fighting the epidemic of brucellosis in Istria between 1945 and 1949. His research of this zoonosis and the monograph he published (Maltese fever in Istria) gave him the status of World Health Organisation expert.

Founding the Faculty of Medicine in Rijeka

At the end of World War II, Rijeka and Sušak were united again. Unfavourable social and medical conditions, especially for fieldwork, and insufficient medical staff demanded the education of new, local people. By 1946 a medical high school had already been opened in Rijeka. Since the only Croatian faculty of medicine of that time in Zagreb was overcrowded, and the number of potential students from the Kvarner and neighbouring regions was growing constantly, the initiative for establishing the faculty of medicine was launched.

On 17 September 1954, the Rijeka National Board and the Council for Public Health and Social Policy sent to the Zagreb School of Medicine Council a report of the meeting attended by the dean of the Zagreb School of Medicine Prof. Dr. Andrija Štampar and the president of the Rijeka National Board Edo Jardas with assistants and health service deputies. On that occasion, the suggestion of the Zagreb School of Medicine to establish its Rijeka branch was accepted and the commission in charge of implementing this initiative was named. The preparations were made at the end of 1954 and the beginning of 1955. The buildings of the Branchetta Brothers Foundation were predetermined for the pre-clinical institutes and the administration; one floor and a hall for 100 students were to be built, and clinical lectures were to be held in the existing hospital buildings. The heads of the hospital departments were supposed to teach and obtain professor degrees (habilitate) regularly, and lecturers from Zagreb and other Yugoslav universities were invited to teach non-clinical courses. At the parliamentary session from 12 July 1955, an act for the foundation of the Faculty of Medicine in Rijeka belonging to the University of Zagreb was passed. The beginning was set for the academic year 1955–1956. At the meeting of the Zagreb Faculty of Medicine on 13 July 1955, Prof. Dr. Silvije Novak was elected full professor and acting dean of the newly founded Faculty of Medicine in Rijeka.

The Rijeka National Board handed over to the faculty the buildings of the Branchetta Brothers Foundation at 20-22 Olga Ban Street together with 14 million dinars on 19 July 1955. The faculty received a further 15 million dinars from the Executive Board of the People’s Republic of Croatia. By mid-August, Dr. Mato Gržeta became the faculty’s first secretary. In late October, the Council of the Zagreb School of Medicine elected the first teachers: S. Novak and Z. Kučić (internal medicine), J. Komljenović (clinical surgery), A. Medanić (general surgery), D. Perović (gynaecology), Z. Sušić (neuropsychiatry), F. Jelašić (neurology), T. Dujmušić and J. Bakotić (otolaryngology), A. Filipović (ophthalmology), B. Cvitanović (hygiene and social medicine). The building of the Branchetta Foundation was examined, and the rooms were allocated at the beginning of November 1955. The acting dean Prof. Dr. Silvije Novak held the introductory lecture, “The meaning of the internal medicine today”, in the Town Hall on 21 November 1955 for six students in the fifth year and twelve graduate students, for many teachers and distinguished individuals from Rijeka and Zagreb. That was the official beginning of the first academic year at the oldest faculty in Rijeka.

On 23 April 1957, the Zagreb University Council sent a suggestion to the Parliamentary Council of the Republic for the Faculty of Medicine in Rijeka to become independent and to allow the enrolment of 80 students in the first term, which was to start in the autumn. Classes for the fourth, fifth and sixth years were supposed to continue, while the second and third years would be organised gradually. On 20 June 1957, the Executive Council of the Republic proclaimed the independence of the Faculty of Medicine in Rijeka and approved the admission quota of 100 students. That is how the Faculty of Medicine in Rijeka became the first faculty in Croatia founded outside Zagreb. The main building was inaugurated at the beginning of October 1957 and the first-year lectures started the next day.

If we want to find the person most responsible for the establishment of the Faculty of Medicine in Rijeka outside Rijeka, we definitely have to look to Prof. Dr. Andrija Štampar, a pioneer in the fields of hygiene, preventive and social medicine who was president of both the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts (today’s Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts) and of the World Health Organisation, and to the world-famous otorhinolaryngologist Prof. Dr. Ante Šercer. There were also some unsuccessful attempts: Andrija Štampar offered the position of Acting Dean to the psychiatrist Dezider Julius from the Vrapče clinic in Zagreb, but Julius turned it down. In Rijeka itself, the idea of establishing the Faculty of Medicine was mostly promoted by Viktor Finderle. A significant role in the success of the foundation was played by both central and local authorities because in the Faculty of Medicine, people saw their own development prospects – prospects that are still being realised in plain view today.

Main sources and references

Archive of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Rijeka
Cenni storici del Civico spedale di Fiume pubblicati a di 20 Maggio 1872 mentre si festeggiava il terzo secolo dalla sua fondazione. Fiume: Stabilimento Tipo- Litografico di Emidio Mohovich, 1872.
Cerkovnikov E. Osvrt na osnivanje Medicinskog fakulteta u Rijeci. Medicina 1965;2:213-17
Cerkovnikov E. Osvrt na osnivanje Medicinskog fakulteta u Rijeci, II. saopćenje. Medicina 1965;2:383-4.
Cerkovnikov E. Deset godina (1955.–1965.) postojanja Medicinskog fakulteta u Rijeci. Liječ vjesn 1966;88:417-22
Cerkovnikov E. Prilog proučavanju osnivanja Medicinskog fakulteta u Rijeci. Acta fac med Flumin 1966;1.7-37.
Cerkovnikov E. Istorijat i uloga riječkog Medicinskog fakulteta na razvoj zdravstva i naučne misli u Rijeci. Acta hist med pharm vet 1967;7:237.
Gentili G. La vita e l’opera di Antonio Felice Giacich, medico ed uomo politico. U: Muzur A, ur. Potencijali lovranske zdravstvene baštine, Lovran, 1997.
Hraste J. Staleško udruženje stomatologa u Rijeci početkom XX stoljeća. Acta stomat Croat 1971;6:107-11.
Korin N. Razvoj medicinske misli u Rijeci. Rijeka: Zavod za zaštitu zdravlja, 1966.
Korin N, Vrbanić D. Povijest zdravstvene kulture na području Rijeke. Dometi 1985; 18 (4-5):53-62.
Matejčić R, Matejčić M. Ars Aesculapii: prilozi za povijest zdravstvene kulture Rijeke i Hrvatskog primorja. Rijeka: ICR, 1982.
Matejčić R, Matejčić M. Povijest zgrade Zadužbine braće Branchetta (današnji Medicinski fakultet). Acta fac med Flumin 1985;10:16-23.
Muzur A. Nezavršena povijest medicine u Rijeci: priča o gradu, ljudima i profesiji. Rijeka: Medicinski fakultet Sveučilišta u Rijeci/Hrvatsko znanstveno društvo za povijest zdravstvene kulture/Naklada Kvarner, 2013.
Muzur A, Škrobonja A. Zdravlje i zdravstvo u Rijeci Adamićeva doba (1780.–1830.). U: Dubrović E, Adamićevo doba. Rijeka: Muzej Grada Rijeke, 2005.
Muzur A, Škrobonja A. Gradska bolnica (Bolnica Sv. Duha) Rijeka: okolnosti premještaja između dvaju svjetskih ratova. Acta med hist Adriat 2005;3:1-7
Sepčić J, Muzur A. Lionello Lenaz: biobibliografska naznaka. Acta fac med Flumin 1997; 22:63-6
Strčić P. Zdravstvena kultura u Zapadnoj Hrvatskoj. U: Pavešić D, Sepčić J, ur. Medicinski fakultet u Rijeci 1955.–1995. Rijeka: Medicinski fakultet Sveučilišta u Rijeci, 1997:7-38.
Škrobonja A. Socijalno medicinske prilike u Rijeci tijekom 15. i 16. stoljeća. Magistarski rad. Rijeka, Medicinski fakultet, 1984.
Škrobonja A. Medicina zavičaja. Rijeka: Express digitalni tisak, 2000.
Škrobonja A, Bobinac D, Varljen J, Simonić A, Linić-Vlahović V. Rijeka: Medical School: Development of higher education and medicine in Rijeka. Cro Med J 1992;33:127-33.
Škrobonja A, Manestar D. Dr. Catti: slike iz života jednog liječnika. Rijeka, EDIT, 1999.
Škrobonja A, Uremović V, Finderle A, Haller H. Two anniversaries related to Dr. Viktor Finderle (1902–1964): one hundred years since his birth and fifty years since patenting his vacuum extractor. Wien Klin Wochenschr 2004;116:1-3.
Zgrablić M. Korijeni i povijest interne medicine u Rijeci. Rijeka: Menora, 1999.

Exhibition on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of the founding of the Faculty of Medicine in Rijeka

Photos from the exhibition can be found on the link.

Collection of literature on MEDRI

Collection of literature can be found on the link.