**5. The Battle and the War**

In 1912, with the success at the Seventh International Congress of Rome, Forlanini became a famous scientist worldwide. In that same year he was proposed for the first time to the Nobel Prize for Medicine and, over the following years, Forlanini was unsuccessfully nominated for this award at least twenty times. His friend and fellow professor at the University of Pavia, Camillo Golgi (Nobel Prize winner for 1906), proposed him three times with the motivation that the invention of pneumothorax was "of great benefit to humanity", a phrase that underlined the consonance of the candidate's merits with the will of Alfred Nobel. However, the Nobel Prize was not awarded in the years of the First World War between 1915 and 1918, and in this last year Forlanini died. The Italian doctor thus had the possibility of winning the prize only in the three years between 1912 and 1914. There were, however, some reasons analyzed in detail by Hansson and Polianski [18] that probably prevented him from being awarded in this short period of time. In fact, all the nominations came from Italian scientists; the method had not yet reached the safety standards that it would obtain a few years later; and there were other alternative surgical operations, less successful, but used in the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis.

In 1913, Forlanini was nominated senator of the kingdom and member of the council of public education in Figure 5. During the years of the First World War, his health gradually declined. However, he had the satisfaction of seeing his invention widely used in clinics all over the world. Forlanini died in Nervi, on the Ligurian Riviera, on 25 May 1918. Immediately after his death, Golgi published a very heartfelt obituary [50].

**Figure 5.** Carlo Forlanini in the last years of his life. Museum for the History of the University of Pavia.

This great physician won his battle against tuberculosis, the first of a series that will follow with other protagonists. His invention has not completely disappeared from medical practice and is still used in special cases, for example in pre-thoracoscopic artificial pneumothorax [51], a fact that would have pleased Forlanini. Unfortunately, however, the war against tuberculosis is still going on and the final victory has not yet been achieved.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declare no conflict of interest.
