Pietro Grocco - Doctor and politician

Introduced to his studies thanks to the help of his beloved uncle, the priest Don Giuseppe Grocco, he graduated in medicine in Pavia and obtained his doctorate in the same city in 1879, subsequently studying in Paris and Vienna.

He was a professor of Clinical Medicine and the founder of an important medical school widely known abroad with students of the caliber of Cesare Frugoni, Aldo Castellani, Sante Pisani, Enrico Greppi, Cesare Baduel and Raffaello Silvestrini and taught at the University of Perugia (from 1884 to 1888), in Pisa (from 1888 to 1892) and finally in Florence (from 1892 until his death).

Appointed in 1892 as government inspector and health director of the Montecatini Spa, he reworked and specified the rules for the correct use of the waters and baths, and arranged for the springs to be arranged according to modern hygienic criteria. On the occasion of the centenary of his birth in 1956, the city named a spa after him, which still bears his name.

Among his patients was Giuseppe Verdi, of whom he became his personal physician in 1888, after the death of Prof. Fedele Fedeli. He continued to "take the waters" at the Montecatini springs, which the Maestro did for the next eighteen years. He became a personal friend and often in the evening they would meet to play briscola, and Mrs. Verdi, Giuseppina Strepponi, always recommended that the Maestro win, otherwise he would be upset; she assisted him until the end and drew up his death certificate.

On December 3, 1905, he was appointed Senator.

He self-diagnosed tuberculosis, contracted in the practice of his profession from one of his countless patients, and predicted its unfortunate outcome by speaking to his closest collaborators.

In an attempt to alleviate his suffering, he moved to Courmayeur in his last days, where he died on 12 February 1916.