Giorgio Nicolich, father of Urology in Trieste

Aim of the study: Until 1918 Trieste was part of the Habsburgic Empire. In this period the city was in full economic and demographic growth. In this context, among the medical and surgical society raised the figure of Giorgio Nicolich senior, brilliant surgeon and researcher. He was initially chief of the Surgical Division and gave birth lately to the Urological Division in 1887, in which he practiced until 1925, year of retirement and death. Materials and methods: Giorgio Nicolich was born in Venice in 1852. He graduated in 1875 at the University of Padua, and became trainee of Tito Vanzetti (1809–1888), a surgeon particularly versed in urinary tract surgery and known for both routine surgical capacity and exceptional operations, that gave throughout his activity new and advanced boundaries to the uro-nephrology field. His activity was open to novelties like the use of radio needles for prostate cancer, the use of nephrectomy, mercurial care of the syphilis. After moving to Trieste, the year after his graduation, he entered the Trieste Civic Hospital as a secondary physician of the Division for chronic syphilitic and surgical diseases and became its chief in 1886. From 1887 he obtained the urological characterization of the Division, and the other surgical specialties were transferred to the pre-existing Surgical Division and to the new 10th Division. At the end of the Great War, in 1919 he became professor of Urology, retired in 1925, after an extension for merit of 5 years. In these last years he was joined by Carlo Ravasini, who succeeded him. Nicolich died in the same year. Results: He carried out a wide activity. He attended the Parisian school of Urology with Gujon and Albarran and, in 1921, he founded the Italian Society of Urology. He was an authority in the field of urology in the national and international landscape (he was a pupil in Vienna of Theodor Billroth) and was coauthor of the “Manual of Urology” and President of the Italian Society of Urology. He became also honorary member of the Urological Society of Berlin, of the Belgian Society and member of the Academy of Medicine of Constantinople. In 1924, the year before his death, he founded the Italian Archives of Urology. Discussion: Apart from his extraordinary ability as a surgeon, Giorgio Nicolich was a member of that small number of doctors born in Trieste or came to Trieste, who created a cohesive environment of remarkable level, between the various Divisions of the City Hospital. He is credited and reminded not only for have given life to the Urology of Trieste, but for have practiced avant-garde medicine and surgery, forming a new generation of specialist surgeons.