Scipione Riva-Rocci

Scipione Riva Rocci (7 August 1863 in Almese, Piedmont – 15 March 1937 in Rapallo, Liguria) was an Italian internist, pathologist and pediatrician. He is best known for the invention of an easy-to-use cuff-based version of the mercury sphygmomanometer for the measurement of blood pressure.

Riva Rocci was born on 7 August in Almese in 1863. He graduated in medicine and surgery in 1888 from the University of Turin. From 1888 to 1898 he acted as assistant lecturer at the propaedeutic medical clinic in Turin under the guidance of Carlo Forlanini and assisted him in the application of "iatrogenic pneumothorax" for treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis. In 1894 he graduated in pathology and in 1907 in pediatrics. In 1898, he followed Forlanini to the University of Pavia where he continued to contribute to the development of Forlanini’s method by showing that the technique did not have a major adverse effect on lung function. From 1900 until 1928 was chief clinician and director of the civic hospital in Varese, and helped to modernize the hospital by opening sanatorium wings and introducing vaccination, radiology and other methods to fight tuberculosis. From 1909 to 1916, he occupied the first chair of pediatrics at Pavia University.

In 1928 he retired from his medical positions due to a neurological condition, probably encephalitis letharica, which he may have contracted from a patient or an autopsy during an epidemic in 1921. He spent the last years of his life in ill-health with paralysis agitans, and died on 15 March 1937 in Rapallo. He was buried in the small cemetery of San Michele di Pagana.

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