Pietro Moscati

Pietro Moscati was an Italian physician and politician, born in Milan in June 1739 and died there on 19 January 1824. The son of a distinguished surgeon, he studied at the Jesuit college of St Alexander and then medicine at the University of Pavia, followed by further study at Padua, Bologna and Pisa under teachers such as Bertrandi, Molinelli and Nannoni. Back in Milan he became chief surgeon at the Pia Casa di Santa Caterina alla Ruota, a maternity and children hospital, where he founded a school for childbirth, and later served as surgeon at the general hospital, where he began a school of surgical clinic. He became a professor at the University of Pavia and a close colleague of Alessandro Volta. After the French invasion of Italy he entered politics, sitting in the national congress of the Cisalpine Republic in 1797 and joining its executive board the next year, rising to its presidency before French suspicion forced him out. When Austrian and Russian forces retook Lombardy in 1799 he was arrested and sent to the fortress of Cattaro.