The understanding of occupational diseases dates back to 1700, when the Italian physician Bernardino Ramazzini (1633-1714) wrote Diseases of Workers. As a result of these studies, he was regarded as the father of occupational medicine.

Bernardino Ramazzini was born October 4, 1633, in Carpi, Modena, Italy. Educated in philosophy and medicine, Ramazzini practiced as a physician until late in 1676, when he became a professor of medicine at the University of Modena (1682-1700) and at Padua (until 1714). In 1682 he was invited to join the university by Duke Francesco d'Esta and appointed to the chair of the theory of medicine at the university. Ramazzini took an early interest in epidemiology, the study of the causes, distribution and control of disease, and he described numerous plagues that ravaged his region of Italy. Soon he expanded his studies to occupational diseases, examining more than 50 occupations and the diseases that were frequently associated with them.

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