Augusto Murri, who directed the new Policlinico Universitario Sant’Orsola from a very young age, is undoubtedly one of the most illustrious clinicians of the late 19th and early 20th century. His medical research led him to anticipate the rationalist method and advocate greater direct observation of patients and their pathologies.
Augusto Murri was born in Fermo in 1841. His father was a magistrate and deputy of the Assembly for the Constitution of the Roman Republic, and is thought to have kept his son away from Jesuit schools because of his political and religious views, leaving him, according to some biographers, in almost total illiteracy until the age of 15. When he was sent into exile after the pontiff's return, he left his family in dire financial straits.
His mother, Teodolinda Polimanti, thus moved with her five children to Florence, where Augusto managed to take his grammar school and high school diploma in just three years with the Piarist fathers of San Giovannino.
The young prodigy then attended various universities, first in Florence, then in Pisa, and finally graduated in Medicine at the University of Camerino in 1863. To further his studies he then went to Paris and, after winning a scholarship, to Germany, under the supervision of Ludwig Traube.
Back in Italy, he became a district doctor in San Severino Marche, Cupramarittima, Fabriano and Civitavecchia. In the meantime he had met and married (1869) Gianna Murri, his namesake but not a relative, by whom he had two children: Tullio and Linda.
His article Sulla natura del processo morboso dell'itterizia grave (On the nature of the pathological process of severe jaundice), published in the Florentine journal 'Lo Sperimentale' in 1868, caused such a sensation that Guido Baccelli called him to Rome two years later as his assistant at the professorship of Clinical Medicine.
Murri was already revolutionising the approach to disease through the convergence of English empiricism and French positivism, which led him to anticipate the rationalist method. He was among the first to clash with the most widely followed diagnostics of the time, the German one, which envisaged an immediate and prevalent use of laboratory tests. He, instead, proposed direct observation of the patient and the symptoms, on which to formulate a specific clinical reasoning.
This analytical procedure was as valid in medical practice as it was in theory, and formed the basis for another article published in ‘Lo sperimentale’ in 1874, Sulla teoria della febbre (On the theory of fever), another paper that brought him acclaim and fame.
Subsequent studies involved brain lesions, cold-induced haemoglobinuria, organotherapy, glandular insufficiency and pathophysiology of heart failure.
Despite his academic and international renown, he did not pass the competition for the professorship of Clinical Medicine in Turin, but two years later, in 1876, he was appointed directly by the Minister for Education Bonghi as Director of the University of Bologna Medical Clinic.
The University hospital had recently been moved by Luigi Concato from the dilapidated Azzolini facilities to the new Sant'Orsola premises. When Concato moved to Padua, Murri had to overcome the reticence of colleagues and students, who were very fond of his predecessor and were almost baffled by the youth of their new director (Murri was 35 years old).
It only took him a few years, however, to prove that he deserved the position and, indeed, for him to greatly improve the situation of his clinics.
Murri's career was truly impressive and in 1888, after the University had celebrated its 800th anniversary, he was elected as the new rector. Right from his acceptance speech, he urged the University to improve its scientific equipment in order to join the ranks of the world's best universities.
The same progressive and radical spirit also came out in his political participation in the city. When he joined the Town Council, he took a keen interest in health and education issues, not sparing criticism of Catholicism and religion as a whole.
For a brief time (1890-91), he was also elected as a member of parliament in the 17th legislature for the constituency of Ascoli Piceno, involving the town in lively debates inspired by Mazzini.
The new century began with the publication of the three volumes dedicated to his scientific research, entitled Scritti medici (Medical Writings), the success of which was, however, overshadowed by an event that occurred in 1902, only a few months later. In the central Via Mazzini, today Strada Maggiore, the corpse of his son-in-law, Francesco Bonmarini, was found. He had been stabbed to death during the night. Murri himself revealed the culprit, his son Tullio, a few days later.
This resulted in a court case that caused a journalistic and political uproar, Tullio being a lawyer and a provincial councillor for the PSI (the Italian socialist party). Distraught, Murri left his teaching posts and temporarily moved away from Bologna, following the case to Turin where it had been transferred. In 1905 finally came the verdict that held the whole of Italy in suspense: Tullio was sentenced to 30 years in prison, while his sister Linda, accused of instigating the murder, received a 10-year sentence (Linda was pardoned the following year and Tullio was released from prison as early as 1919).
At the request of his students and colleagues, Murri immediately returned to teaching. During this last period of activity, he published Lezioni di clinica medica edite ed inedite date nella R. Università di Bologna (Published and unpublished lessons in Clinical Medicine given at the Royal University of Bologna, 1908) and the collection Pensieri e precetti (Thoughts and precepts, 1913).
At 75 he had to retire for reasons of age, but his interest in old clinical subjects and new scientific disciplines continued, in particular psychoanalysis, on which he wrote Nosologia psicologica (Psychological Nosology, 1923).
He had also been an important advocate of the benefits of therapeutic baths and had directed the hydrotherapy establishment in Rimini in 1879. When the first permanent maritime colony in Italy was set up in the coastal town (1911) with a view to taking in children suffering from measles, scarlet fever and dementia, it was decided to dedicate the facility to him. This was very successful, also thanks to his financial contribution.
Bologna, instead, dedicated one of the most important streets outside the historical centre to him in 1948. This street still gives its name to the entire district, one of the city's most famous and wealthy.
Murri died in Bologna in 1932 and his body was brought back to his hometown.