Biography of Achille Spatuzzi (1835-1920): a hygienist physician in the Naples Belle Époque

The Italian physician Achille Spatuzzi was a professor and a senior municipal health official that lived in Naples during the last half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries. He significantly contributed to the statement, spread and he internationalization of hygienism by attending several meetings as a speaker and by writing a lot of manuscripts. Additionally, Spatuzzi worked at the dawn of revolutionary discoveries in microbiology. Spatuzzi sustained the theory of miasmas, an ancient theory applied until the end of the nineteenth century, which traces the etiology of several diseases, including malaria, cholera, typhus and tuberculosis, to miasmatic exhalations, and consequently to degraded environment, and not to specific pathogens. Moreover, Spatuzzi revealed that the nutritional value of food is highly relevant to maintaining human health. In this paper, we trace the biography of Achille Spatuzzi to highlight his pivotal role in the history of medicine, considering that – despite being highly regarded not only in Italy but also internationally during his time – his name has since been forgotten.