ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Learning and Adapting Veterinary Science for the Papal States: Giuseppe Oddi’s Mission to France (1805-1806)

• In Event: Building Disciplines

English Abstract

In 1804, pope Pius VII decided to establish a chair of veterinary medicine at the Sapienza University in Rome. Since the 1760s, in fact, veterinary schools and teachings had been created in several European countries to provide students with both empirical skills and theoretical knowledge (e.g. about animal anatomy, physiology and hygiene). Public authorities intended to codify, standardise and verify the expertise of health practitioners who should become key actors of ambitious programs of agricultural improvement and sanitary containment against epizootics.
In the Papal States, however, this project appeared doomed to failure because of the lack of qualified experts suitable for such an appointment. Hence, Professor Giuseppe Oddi (a mathematician!) was sent to the prestigious veterinary schools in Alfort and Lyon to be trained, study the functioning of these educational institutions, and buy up-to-date books and surgical instruments. Oddi’s unpublished correspondence with his patron cardinal Giuseppe Doria Pamphili, which is currently held at the State Archives of Rome, allows us to examine his day-to-day experiences and highlight his intellectual and emotional effort to turn himself into a veterinary surgeon capable of mastering unfamiliar knowledge and practices. This paper will therefore demonstrate that the actual introduction of a newly conceived medical discipline such as veterinary science into the Papal States was all but linear. Instead, it entailed a complex process of self-adaptation by Oddi, in a context in which the French cultural hegemony reflected and fostered Napoleon’s political predominance over the continent.

Author

• Marco Emanuele Omes, University of Milan