The San Gallicano Institute
The Santa Maria and San Gallicano dermatological institute has a history of almost three hundred years. It was founded by the will of Pope Benedict XIII, Pietro Francesco Orsini, with the Papal Bull Bonus ille of October 6, 1726.
Instead, it dates back to March 14, 1725, the year of the Jubilee, the ceremony for the laying of the first stone, held with a solemn Mass celebrated by the Pope himself as a result of ecclesiastics and a multitude of people.
The new health facility was built in the Trastevere district. The project was entrusted to the architect Filippo Raguzzini who brought a series of engineering innovations and opted for a long longitudinal plant, good-naturedly renamed by the Romans Ospedalone, whose effigy was taken in a commemorative medal minted in 1727.
The hospital was established for the treatment of people with skin diseases (leprosy, scabies, ringworm, etc.), rejected by the other nosocomial of Rome for fear of contagion, and to which the apostolate was already addressing for years by don Emilio Lami, who became the first Prior of the Hospital, assisted by the administrative point of view by Cardinal Pietro Marcellino Corradini, as protector. The latter also owes the Rules of the Venerable Spedale di Santa Maria and San Gallicano published in 1731 at the printing house of Girolamo Mainardi.
The San Gallicano was the first hospital dedicated to the treatment of skin and contagious diseases.
The hospital’s reputation and commitment to care grew rapidly, quickly becoming a point of reference, including outside of the region, for skin and venereal pathologies. At a later date (1860), San Gallicano became home to the first Chair of Dermatology of La Sapienza University in Rome.
At the end of the 1800s, the head physician Dr Schilling published the first editions of Il Bollettino del San Gallicano, which is still published today, which included the most interesting clinical situations and the first epidemiological data particularly in the field of venereology, now called STDs.
During the last 50 years, dermatology has increasingly set its focus on new acquisitions in the field of genetics, epidemiology and biomolecular studies, just as the work of specialists and researchers, which initially involved care, it is now also placed on translational research in the field of dermatology.
The modern hospital has increasingly become a high-tech, high-cost facility in optimising efficiency, and less frequently represents a healthcare environment for general healthcare assistance which can also be provided at home or in nonhospital facilities at a low cost.
Since it was first acknowledged as an IRCSS, San Gallicano’s main aim has been to put the individual first and healthcare and protection and pursue its mission in training and research (mainly translational) goals regarding the biomedical and dermatological fields.