Improving Children’s Health. Hygiene, Medicine and Pedagogy in the Italian School-medical Service and the Case of Milan (1950-1970)

In 1910, Italy’s General Healthcare Law set out plans for a school-medical service but limited it to the prevention of infectious diseases. It was only in 1961, three years after the establishment of the Ministry of Health, that the school-medical service was founded with a wider remit. The full implementation of the decree came in 1967 when the regulations were issued. This delay by the state was counterbalanced in Milan by the intense activity of the City Health Department. The capital of the economic boom in the 1950s and ‘60s, Milan had two mayors who were doctors, a long tradition of care for children and schools, and a wide network of doctors involved in social medicine. The aim of this paper is to show how in Milan in the 1950s and ‘60s, children’s physical condition was the subject of intense interest as a result of campaigns that linked hygiene, medicine and pedagogy to improve children’s health.