Veterinari in Francia e ritorno: storie di formazione professionale nella Lombardia teresiana e giuseppina

In the late 18th century, the culture of Enlightenment rethought the role of veterinary medicine and realized that its practice needed a theoretical specialization as well as a separate training. This paper follows two young men from Mantua, at that time a dominion of the Habsburg monarchy, from their school years at Alfort, near Paris, to their professional adulthood as public veterinarians, through the lens given by the exchange of letters between the governor of Lom- bardy Karl von Firmian and the administrative officer of Mantua Joannon de Saint-Laurent.