Despite his modest background, the Florentine Giuseppe Barellai managed to complete his university course in medicine and surgery at the University of Pisa in 1834. Having resigned from the position of additional physician to the Court due to his liberal political views, he became the master on duty at the Hospital of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. His ideals led him to take part in the Battle of Curtatone and Montanara (1848), in which he was captured by the Austrians, who held him prisoner for some time in the fortress of Theresienstad in Bohemia. In the 1850s, Barellai devoted himself with great commitment to studying youthful forms of tuberculosis, going so far as to establish a precise preventive therapy based on sojourns at seaside hostels. His greatest merit was that of having promoted an activity of medical prevention addressed to every class of the population, and it is expressly to that social consciousness that we owe the founding, at his initiative, of Florence's first seaside hostel at Viareggio in 1856. The results of his experiments were divulged in essays, such as Gli ospizi marini d’Italia [The seaside hostels of Italy] (1867) and in articles whose echoes resounded even beyond the boundaries of Italy, determining the success of seaside therapies, which, in the 1880s, involved over 50,000 boys and girls.