[Keynote lecture: Work seen through the clinical viewpoint: history and ideology].

One of the problems harassing Italy during the period between the 19th and 20th centuries was the "health issue", that was typical of a country penalized by age-old backwardness and shaken by the initial shocks of the industrial revolution. Diseases of poverty like pellagra were combined with diseases of progress like those associated with new techniques and relationships in manufacturing. In this regard, Milan developed an ethical and political leadership first in promoting reforms and also in providing the matrix for advanced organization, assistance and scientific models: among them was "work clinicalization" as achieved at the Clinic for Occupational Diseases, founded and directed by Luigi Devoto.