Brambilla, Giovanni Alessandro
Brambilla was born in San Zenone al Po on April 15th 1728. After five years of internship at San Matteo Hospital, he enrolled in the Austrian army as assistant surgeon; a modest beginning to a career which led him to become, by 1779, sole Supervisor of the Austrian military health system, Imperial Protosurgeon under Joseph II, Knight of the Holy Roman Empire, Aulic Counsel and, lastly, to be gifted with the Feud of Carpiano, in the Pavia area.
He strived to see a resurgence of surgery, at the time considered the lowly sister of medicine, in all Imperial territories; for this purpose, he founded in 1758 the Medical-Surgical Academy of Vienna (better known as the Josephinium, in honor of the Emperor), a place to impart a profound and modern training upon those who were going to dedicate their life to surgery.
He also perorated the case of the University of Pavia with the Emperor. To him is owed the call of Antonio Scarpa to the chair of Anatomy, whom he had met and admired a few years prior in Paris.
It was also because of Brambilla that Scarpa received as a gift from the Emperor an exquisite set of instruments in ivory and steel, divided in thirty-six boxes, to be used while teaching young surgeons.
Brambilla returned to Pavia in 1795, after the death of Joseph II, and here he remained until the eve of his death. He passed on the 30th of July 1800 in Padua, on his way to Vienna after the victory of the French troops in Marengo.