"Garibaldi fu ferito" . La patriottica avventura del chirurgo palermitano Enrico Albanese.

On 11 May 1860, Giuseppe Garibaldi landed with his thousand red shirts in Western Sicily. Among the local rebels who joined him, there was a young physician, Enrico Albanese. Two years after the expedition of the “Mille”, Giuseppe Garibaldi landed in Sicily again; his plan was to recruit an army of volunteers to conquer Rome. On July 20, 1862, he swore “Rome or death” in the cathedral of Marsala, and this caused great alarm in Turin. Sicily had been under siege since August, 20, and the Savoia Royal Army, under the command of General Enrico Cialdini, was ready to reach and block Garibaldi. Towards the end of the month, the regular Army and the red shirts came face to face. This was the story of a dramatic struggle, culminating in a gun battle in which Garibaldi was wounded and defeated. This study, researched using a number of nineteenth-century sources, investigates in detail the events from the first shot fired by the Royal Army on the Garibaldini from the heights of Aspromonte, on 29 August 1862, which wounded Garibaldi on the ankle. The study focuses on the patriot Enrico Albanese, a distinguished surgeon of Palermo who had been Garibaldi’s friend and personal physician since 1860 and followed him in his military campaigns. This article also overviews the process started in the second half of the 19th century, when the newly reunified Kingdom of Italy had to face the issue of the reform of the health legislative system. After the political unification, one politician who devoted himself to building the normative path of a solid sanitary organization was Francesco Crispi. He introduced some innovative aspects of the Kingdom of Italy’s health laws, which represented the fundaments for the future development of the whole Italian health legislation system. The so-called Crispi Regulation was issued in July, 1888. This law was revolutionary in its health section, abolishing the sifilicomi and providing for free and equal treatment for men and women who had contracted venereal diseases; prostitutes in the brothels were insured regular medical checks. The law n. 5849, fundamental in public health field, since established the specificity of health and the need of an appropriate regulation within the Kingdom of Italy, was approved on December 22, 1888. This law established the principle that the State was responsible for the health of its citizens. An High Health Council within the Ministry of the Interior was instituted, involving for the first time the physicians in medical decision-making: and one of them was Albanese. Both of these important health regulations, to which Albanese gave his contribution, were still in force over the 19th and 20th centuries. Il medico palermitano Enrico Albanese era stato uno dei membri dell’élite siciliane che aveva non solo creduto nella causa unitaria ma in prima persona preso parte all’epopea garibaldina che aveva reso possibile l’unificazione della Sicilia al Regno d’Italia. Nato a Palermo l’11 marzo del 1834, era ancor giovanissimo nel 1860, ma gli studi rigorosi di medicina e la fede antiborbonica avevano formato un uomo di forte carattere. Perfezionatosi a Firenze presso illustri maestri, aveva lì avuto contatti con i fuoriusciti siciliani che facevano capo a grandi famiglie come i Lanza di Trabia e di Scordia, i Benso della Verdura, ed altri. Dopo i moti del 4 aprile 1860, ai quali aveva preso parte insieme al fratello Achille, scampava con la fuga alla feroce repressione borbonica e si imbarcava su un vascello inglese, the Races, alla volta di Cagliari, da dove proseguiva per Livorno e Firenze. Il Ricasoli, al tempo Governatore della Toscana, gli rilasciava un passaporto col quale, partendo da Genova, ritornava in una Palermo non ancora libera dai Borbone l’8 giu