Vincenzo Tiberio (May 1, 1869 – January 7, 1915) was an Italian researcher and medical officer of the Medical Corps of the Italian Navy and physician at the University of Naples. Observing that people complained of intestinal disorders after the walls of a well which supplied drinking water was cleaned off, he published a little noticed 1895 paper on the bactericidal effect of some molds, 35 years before Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin.
Early life and education
Vincenzo Tiberio was born in Sepino (Molise, province of Campobasso) May 1, 1869. His father, Domenicantonio, was a notary; his mother, Filomena Guacci, came from an upper-middle-class family. He had one brother, Sebastiano. When Vincenz was only seven years old (1876) his mother died and his father married Rosa Palladino di Guardiaregia. Vincenzo attended primary and secondary school in Sepino, but attended the secondary school final exam in Campobasso in the academic year 1883–1884. He attended high school and graduated in 1888–1889. He went on to study at the Medicine and Surgery University of Naples. During his university years he stayed at his father's sister place in Arzano, a crucial place where he started to notice a singular phenomenon which initiate his interest in molds. In the fourth year of university he started to go regularly to the Institute for Hygiene, directed by the professor Eugenio Fazio, who was studying the vital competition of bacteria. In 1892 he became an internal student of the institute, and started to learn bacteriological and chemical laboratory methods. He graduated in 1893 and immediately applied to the Health Officials at the Institute of Hygiene.
Professional career
After finishing his degree in 1893 he enrolled in the public Hygiene course. In 1894 he received the post of ordinary assistant in the institute of Patologia Speciale Medica Dimostrativa, where he contributed by working three days a week in a public clinic, also organizing the scientific journal La Riforma Medica. During this period, which lasted almost a year, he reviewed over one hundred and eighty works.
Before the end of 1894 Tiberius made a drastic choice in participating and winning the competition for medical officer of the navy abandoning his university career. According to his dairies, all his pride emerged from the uniform he wore, for belonging to the navy and for life on board ships and for the Italian flag. Another reason that can not be ruled out for taking this decision to join the navy was the lack of reaction from the scientific community to his second and most innovative publication in his institute on the power of bacteriostatic and bactericidal power of molds "Potere batteriostatico e battericida delle muffe".
He started his service on January 1, 1896, with the rank of second class doctor, on January 10 he was assigned to the 3rd department. His first mission was in crete. Later on he was assigned to work in chania (small town in crete island) and stayed there from April 11, 1896, to January 7, 1897, and yet again from September 10, 1897, to October 22, 1898. In December 1898 he was assigned to the Sant'Anna navy hospital in Venice in the surgery and medicine department.
On December 6, 1900, he embarked for Zanzibar where an epidemic of smallpox, malaria and other tropical diseases such as yaws, elephantiasis, filariasis and sleeping sickness had broken out, and the ship was forced to remain anchored for nine months. The mission ended in 1902, and Tiberius returned to Italy.
After this period he was promoted to first class medical officer, and was on duty at the Maddalena department hospital where he remained until 1903.
In 1907 he began his specialization at the Institute of Hygiene of the Neapolitan University.
From April to December 1912 he was sent to Maddalena, where he took over the management of the Cabinet of Bacteriology of the Maritime Military Hospital.
From January 1913 to January 1914 he was Director of the Infirmary of the naval base of Tobruk in Libya, and director of the related Scientific Cabinet.
He returned to Italy in January 1914, where he was appointed director of “Gabinetto di Batteriologia e Igiene dell’Ospedale Militare Marittimo di Venezia” in Venice and, immediately after, he was transferred to become the director of “Gabinetto di Igiene e Batteriologia dell’Ospedale della Marina a Piedigrotta in Napoli” in Napoli.
On January 7, 1915, he became ill and died from myocardial infarction at the age of 45 years old.