Lorenzo Berzieri was born in Besozzola di Pellegrino Parmense, a small village situated in the province of Parma, on 5th December 1806.
He graduated in medicine at University of Parma and in 1835, at 29 years old he was appointed local physician to the town of Salsomaggiore Terme.
In 1839 doctor Lorenzo Berzieri experimented, for the first time, the curative properties of the natural local sodium iodide water. The physician used the thermal water to treat a sick child named Franchina Ceriati of Salsomaggiore Terme. The doctor tried to save the young girl from a limb amputation seriously injured from cancer, the result of the testing was something of the miracoulos about it.
After the medical consultation, doctor Berzieri prescribed sea bathing, but the humble conditions of the patient’s family could not permit the therapy, this was the reason why the physician treated the little girl using the thermal water of Salsomaggiore Terme.
On 19th June doctor Berzieri began his experiments. The thermal bathing therapy finished on 13 th July and in December of the same year, the recovery of little Franchina Ceriati was successfully completed.
In 1941 doctor Lorenzo Berzieri was appointed medical director of Tabiano Thermal Spa. Here he worked for over 40 years and during this time he continued to prescribe thermal bathing in the sodium chloride and sodium iodide-rich water which was carried by mules from the salt artworks of Salsomaggiore.
Studies into the benefits of the water of Salsomaggiore, begun originally by Berzieri and were continued by doctor Giovanni Valentini (1816-1886), who immediately grasped the importance of his predecessor’s discovery and turned his home into a treatment centre.
The little girl Franchina Ceriati, treated by doctor Lorenzo Berzieri, became the first bath-assistant (bagnina) in staff at the thermal spa complex.
