HISTORY OF CISO PIEMONTE
In 1981 the Piedmont Section of the Italian Centre for Health and Hospital History (CISO) was established, with the aim of promoting the development and dissemination of research and historical studies in the field of health and welfare in the Piedmont area.
On 14 May 1982 the first CISO-Piedmont Conference took place on the subject "Sources and methods for health history". The Conference aims to start an initial recognition of the state of health history research in Piedmont and a comparison with those of other regions.
In the following years, CISO-Piemonte organized a series of meetings to raise public awareness of social and health problems, with the participation of specialists in the field.
In 1987 the Piedmont Region published Il catasto della carità. Ipab and Hospitals in Piedmont 1861-1985, a work divided into 15 volumes conceived by Professor Umberto Levra, president of CISO-Piedmont, who directed the work of a team of Turin researchers. Data and information on all the welfare and health institutions present in the 1209 municipalities of the regional territory are collected and registered: hospitals, hospices, asylums, orphanages, kindergartens, charitable congregations.
In 1988 the conference "From charity to assistance. Studies, methods, sources. 1978-1988", in collaboration with the University of Turin, Department of History, and with the Departments of Assistance, Culture and Health of the Piedmont Region. The proceedings were published in issue no. 1 of 1989 of the journal "Sanità, Scienza e Storia".
In the following years, scholars belonging to CISO-Piedmont took part in various congress events including the study conference "Social Assistance and Local Authorities", in 1997, and the one on "Past and present of psychiatry in Turin", in 2002, with specific reports.
In 2006 the CISO collaborated in the publication of the volume L'Ospedale militare. A resource for Turin, curated by Pier Luigi Bassignana for the Torino Incontra Congress Center.
In 2007 the three-year research on "Madness. Science, praxis, imagination in the Italian nineteenth century", which benefited from a substantial contribution from the Piedmont Region. The research led to the publication of the volume Il Regio manicomio di Torino. Science, practice and imagination in the Italian nineteenth century, included in the CISO series of the publisher EGA (Editrice Gruppo Abele), and includes essays relating to the history of the Turin psychiatric hospital. In the same series, Giacomo L. Vaccarino, president of the CISO, published Scrivere la follia. Depressed madmen and asylums in twentieth-century literature.
In more recent years, CISO-Piemonte resumed its congress activity.
2014 – "History and stories of the asylum. Doctors, alienists and patients in Piedmont between '800 and '900". The conference, organized in collaboration with the ALMM (Association for the fight against mental illness), Democratic Psychiatry and Psychiatry and History, and with the patronage of the Piedmont Region and the Order of Doctors of the Province of Turin, was held in Turin at the headquarters of the ALMM.
2015 – "The First World War. Health, diseases, healthcare and assistance": this too with the collaboration of the ALMM and Psichiatria Democratica, and with the patronage of the Piedmont Region and the Order of Doctors of the Province of Turin, took place at the Turin headquarters of the FIMMG (Italian Federation of General Practitioners).
2017 - "Towards reform: from alienism to mental health. The '60s and '70s in Piedmont": organized with the collaboration of the ASL TO3 and accredited CME, with the patronage of the Piedmont Region, the Order of Doctors of the Province of Turin and Democratic Psychiatry, it took place in Collegno at the "Lavanderia a Vapore" center.
2019 - "The undergrounds of healthcare. The roots of the past to understand the present": at the Conference Room of the Historical Archives of the Compagnia di San Paolo in Turin, and under the patronage of the Piedmont Region and the Order of Doctors of the Province of Turin.
In 2021, from 6 to 26 May, the exhibition "From local doctors to the National Health Service" is set up in the halls of the Polo del Novecento in Turin: in the context of the exhibition, some conferences are held on the themes of diseases and healthcare throughout history. The same exhibition, in collaboration with ISRAL, Institute for the History of the Resistance, was brought to Alessandria, from 6 November to 11 December of the same year; a third edition was set up from 8 September to 8 October 2023 in the Sala delle Arti in the Certosa park in Collegno with the contribution of the Municipality of Collegno.
At the end of 2023, the publication of the volume "Assisting and Succoring. History of the San Lazzaro Civic Hospital in Alba": the work was edited by CISO-Piedmont researchers, who retraced the history of the hospital through the documentation of the archive, and published with the contribution of the Alba-Bra Hospital Foundation. The same Foundation has therefore commissioned the CISO to carry out similar research on the history of the Santo Spirito Hospital in Bra.