Joseph Vita Castelli

Joseph Vita Castelli, son of a prominent Livornese rabbi, received his medical degree from the University of Pisa in 1766, though, as a Jew, he had to pay his doctoral committee a double fee. Ironically, his strong humanist views led to another kind of discrimination toward the end of his short life: his application in 1770 to a Jewish medical society to be hired as a public doctor was denied. Castelli later criticized the poor understanding of religion as an obstacle to progressive use of the smallpox vaccine. Castelli’s writings, composed in the vernacular, promoted Enlightenment ideals of reason and truth, as well as reliance on scientific methods in medical practice.