Lionello Lenaz
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Biographical notes
A scientist of European renown, he was born in Rijeka on 17 August 1872, two years after the city's return to Hungary. Despite the climate of détente between the Hungarian government and the municipality, Lenaz has always had his eyes and heart turned to Italy since adolescence.
He trained in the Gymnasium where the language of instruction was still exclusively Italian. He then continued to Vienna as an undergraduate student at the Faculty of Medicine, where he was elected president of the city's Italian Academic Circle. After graduating in 1895, he remained another six years as an assistant in the polyclinic of nervous diseases directed by Prof. Benedikt, and then in the medical clinic of Prof. Neusser. In 1901 he returned to Rijeka to direct the newly established bacteriological laboratory of the Civil Hospital.
In the political field, he joined the Autonomous Party in which he saw the only guarantor of the autonomy and Italianness of Fiume. He also supported the "La Giovane Fiume" club, created by young people who now looked to Italy as the only salvation, and for which he ran for the Representation.
In 1918 he was a member of the Steering Committee of the National Council and signatory of the Proclamation of annexation to Italy on 30 October. After the anti-French uprisings of July 1919 and the decisions taken by the Inter-Allied Commission of Inquiry, he considered the intervention of Gabriele D'Annunzio necessary, welcoming him on 12 September as a liberator.
In 1934, Mussolini intended to appoint him Senator, but when he learned that the motivation was for "patriotic merits", he refused, considering having served the country not a merit, but a duty.
He died in his villa in Laurana on October 2, 1939, without being able to complete his last work, Lessons in Neurology.
Critical notes
His medical studies focused on various branches of medicine. His major work is the Lectures on Hematology (Wassermann ed.), in which he argues that leukemia is the cancer of the blood. He was then the first to point out the importance of the extrapyramidal nervous system. Among his last battles, we remember the one against latent infections of the mouth, teeth and tonsils, as causes of the pathology of nephritis, joint remautism and heart defects.
In 1930 he was awarded the gold medal of the Medical Press and in 1937 the solemn commendation of the Academy of Italy.