Salvatore Luigi Pisani

Salvatore Luigi Pisani CMG, MD (27 May 1828, in Birgu – 27 October 1908, in Zejtun) was a Maltese doctor, renowned professor of anatomy, surgery, midwifery and gynaecology.

[1] During the Crimean War Pisani, then in charge of the Pembroke regiment of the Military Medical Department, volunteered as surgeon with the British Army and was posted to Scutari and then Balaclava[1] where he worked with Florence Nightingale.

[1] For the following thirty years, Pisani served as specialist accoucher and surgeon at Malta's Government Hospital, in particular pioneering the practice of ophthalmology, a field in which he worked closely with his graduate Lorenzo Manché.

Pisani devised the curriculum of the new School of Practical Midwifery, established in 1860, lecturing in English and Italian and promoting the use of the Maltese language to educate paramedics.

He recommended the government to improve local public health standards, in particular as concerns clean water supply, well-sanitised buildings for the working class, and extending the sewage system to rural areas.

He lived at "his commodious and comfortable Villa Sans Souci situated in a lovely spot between Casal Zeitun and Marsascirocco where he quietly passed away on October 27, 1908, after a somewhat prolonged illness.

The funeral cortege offered an unmistakable proof of the high esteem in which Prof. Pisani was held, comprising as it did, the elite of society, a good many following the hearse in carriages from Sans Souci to the Addolorata Cemetery, where many more joined the procession".