Nikolic of Trieste

Nikolić of Trieste are remembered as one of Trieste's prominent merchants and doctors. The so-called "Illyrians" of the Orthodox faith, or Serbs established a trading colony 300 years ago and played a significant part in the development of the maritime city.

It was Mostar-born Simeon Nikolić who first came to Trieste from Trebinje in 1773. He died early, in 1793, at the age of less than 47. He left behind two houses in the city, one with an apartment and a shop, as well as a property with a building in the suburbs of Greta. Simeon was a widower for years, so he appointed his daughter Jelisaveta as the heir of the entire property. When her father died, Jelisaveta was a minor, therefore, Nikola Petrović and Jovan Nikolić were appointed her guardians. Together with Stefan Riznić, they witnessed the writing of the last will of Simeon Nikolić. Simeon left a hundred forints to the Serbian church of Saint Spyridon, 50 forints in gold for poor people and another 50 to "Illyrian poor people". He left 200 forints to his cousin Jovanka, George Petrović's wife, and left 300 forints to "his housekeeper Katarina," who worked at his home for years, as "a reward for services rendered". Daughter Jelisaveta received all other assets whose total value was estimated at 17,126 forints.

In their book The Chronicle of the Serbs in Trieste", Medaković and Milošević note that one other Nikolić whose name is recorded in the lists of the Serbian community in Trieste is Jovan, who arrived here from Sarajevo in 1774. In Trieste, he married Sofia Vojnović, who bore him five sons and two daughters. He died in 1812, leaving behind three houses and many other properties. " Although a very rich man, Jovan Nikolić in his will, however, says: "I want my funeral to be done without any luxury and with the greatest savings." His testamentary witnesses were Drago Teodorović and Todor Mekša.

Of all the Nikolić members, the one who had the greatest wealth was Nikola Nikolić, a naval captain, merchant and medical doctor, born in Dubrovnik in 1735, who died in Trieste on 12 February 1806. He had a brother Jovan. Nikola's legacy was houses, land, ships, bills of exchange and cash, a total of 118,309 forints. He will be succeeded by his second wife, Marijeta Petrovic, whom he married in Herceg Novi and with whom he had three sons, Dimitrije, Jovan and Djordje.

In his will and testament, Dr. Nikola Nikolić will not forget the church of Saint Spyridon, bequeathing 1,300 forints, along with another 100 flornts for each parishioner, 300 florits for the Serbian schools, 50 florints to teachers' schools, 100 florints to Catholic hospitals and 100 florints to each of the established municipal funds for the poor.

In his will, he explicitly bequeathed a sum of 50 forints to the priests of the Greek church of St. Nicholas. It was not a large sum, though still a noticeable gesture as a confirmation of the fact that the split between the Greek and Serbian Orthodox communities in Trieste did not leave hostility or irreparable insults.

There were two Đorđe Nikolić, uncle and nephew both famous Serbian physicians in the service of the city, the world, culture and science are also remembered. The nephew was Giorgio Nicolich.

The older doctor Djordje Nikolic moved to Trieste from Genoa in 1849, and his family moved there from Kotor. He was born in Genoa on 3 May 1818. It is almost certain that he was related to the "Trieste" Nikolić family. Namely, at that time, when the family business expanded, it was customary to open shops and branches in other cities and sent family members to be manage, while the founder and main owner would remain in the primary headquarters and center of the entire company and from there run the entire business.

After completing his medical studies in Padua in 1842, and after specializing in Paris, Dr. Djordje Nikolic settled in Trieste where he was appointed as a temporary municipal doctor just at the time when the plague was raging in the city, between 1863 and 1871. A year later, he became the primarius of the surgical department and president of the hospital medical council. As early as 1873, he took over the function of the Trieste Stadt-Physikus, which today would correspond to the position of director of the municipal administration for hygiene. The functions and titles of Dr. Nikolić changed, and his work in the field of medicine brought him many accolades and recognitions, including his appointment as the Knight of the Crown of Italy. He was the author of a number of professional books, including the exceptional "Studies on Breathing" (Studi sulla ventilazione), published in Trieste in 1869. In 1875, Dr. Đorđe Nikolić was one of the founders of the Trieste Medical Society, of which he was the first president. Until his death, in Trieste on 15 January 1886.

He studied medicine in Paris, receiving his doctorate in 1858. He was appointed médecin des hôpitaux in 1864, and was later a professor of surgical pathology (from 1877) and genitourinary surgery (from 1890) at the University of Paris. In 1878 he became a member of the Académie de Médecine. At Hôpital Necker he held clinics that were attended by students worldwide.

The nephew, Professor Dr. Giorgio Nicolich was world-renowned urologist. In 1907, he along with urologists from Europe, the United States and South America established the Association Internationale d'Urologie. In 1979 he was commemorated on a postage stamp, issued by France on the occasion of the 18th Congress of the Association Internationale d'Urologie, held in Paris.[1] The Hôpital Félix Guyon, located in Saint-Denis, Réunion, is named in his honour.[2]

Although he was primarily known for work with genitourinary anatomy, Guyon was credited with the discovery of the ulnar canal at the wrist. This canal channels blood vessels and the ulnar nerve from the forearm to the hand, and is now known as Guyon's canal. Ulnar nerve compression at this location is sometimes referred to as "Guyon's tunnel syndrome".[1]

One of the cousins ​​of Dr. George Nikolić, George, son of Dobrivoje and Ana Maria Donadoni, moved with his uncle from Venice to Trieste.

He, like his uncle, finished medicine in Padua, and specialized in Graz. He also got a job at the hospital in Trsan and in 1886 he became the primarius of the 7th ward, where patients with sexual and chronic diseases were treated. From 1889 to 1896 he was the president of the hospital medical council, and in 1889 he founded a fund to help poor convalescents.

In 1897, Dr. Nikolić succeeded in obtaining permission to receive urogenital surgery in his hospital ward, and thus de facto became the founder of the first urology ward in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and consequently in Italy.

In 1907, he was appointed president of the Trieste Medical Society, whose uncle was one of the founders, a position he would hold for the rest of his life.

In 1919, he established the first Department of Urology in Italy at the Faculty of Medicine in Florence, and two years later, in 1921, he founded the first Italian Society of Urologists and was its first president. In 1923, by a special decree of the mayor of Trieste, he remained a lifelong ad honorem primarius of the great City General Hospital, although at that time he was already over seventy years of age with forty years of service.

In 1924, he founded the Italian Archives of Urology, and the following year, shortly before his death, he was appointed an honorary member of the Society of Urologists in Berlin.

A student of the famous Tito Vanzetti from Padua, and then the father of French urology Félix Guyon and Joaquin Albarran, Dr. Đorđe Nikolić grew into a gigantic scientist, one of the best in Europe.

An unsurpassed surgeon, he introduced the world's first surgical intervention in the treatment of tuberculosis of the kidneys and was one of the first doctors in Europe to perform prostatectomy. His merits for science and society include the modification of the hitherto extremely painful urethrotome of Maisonneuve. An eminent scientist, a man of great genius, is rightly considered the father of Italian urology.

He is a member of many of the most prestigious medical societies in Europe, and was awarded the French Legion of Honor and the Italian Order of the Crown of Italy. From the ranks of his students grew a plethora of later Italian urology experts of international repute.

Dr. Nikolić was a great Italian patriot and, at the very beginning of the First World War, he pledged all his property as a guarantee of a war loan to Italy, and after the fall of Austria, he became a member of the Trieste Health Committee.

A man of broad culture, he strongly advocated freedom of movement and enrichment of knowledge, so he himself traveled to distant lands. With a cordial attitude and an open mind, he was at the same time an extremely simple and extremely humble man, always ready to recognize and admit his own mistakes and to learn from them, for himself and for others. Persistent and persistent as a scientist and professional, he bravely faced problems, rigorously and without fear of the new. He died in Trieste on 11 February 1925.

It is an interesting fact that neither the founder of the Trieste Medical Society, nor the father of Italian urology have any direct connection with the Trieste Palace of Nikolić, a building that still exists and bears that name. It is located on Sant Antonio Nuovo Square at number 2. Namely, since 1812, Sofija Nikolić, born Vojnović, the widow of the rich merchant Jovan Nikolić, has lived in the building on that place. That building was demolished, and in the same place (on the same cadastral mark of parcel 875) a new one was erected (and bears the same name) in 1824, according to the project of the architect Giacomo Fumis, and it originally had two floors. According to the custom of those years, another floor was added to the building a year later, which partially disturbed the proportions of the building. The building is easily recognizable by the central part of the arch above the entrance to the building, where there is a figure of a man with a large mustache and a hat holding a shark in his mouth. It is about the character of the cousin of the merchant Jovan Nikolić, who was killed in a shipwreck, when he sank with the ship he commanded during one of the sea storms. The ship sank because it was overloaded with goods.

The carved image of the deceased relative on the stone arch above the entrance door to the building was one of the ways for the family to keep the memory of the injured relative alive and to tell the world about its tragedy.

Literature

• Marco Pozzetto, "Gli uomini che hanno fatto Trieste", in La bora, anno IV, 1980, n. 5. About this and Medaković and
• Medaković and Milošević, 46.
• Girolamo conte Agapito, Compiuta e distesa storico-pittorica della fedelissima città e portofranco di Trieste, Vienna, 1826, 69.
• Antonella Cosenzi, "Nicolich", in Le genti di San Spiridone, Trieste: Silvana Editorialiale, 2009, 85.

References

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