Italian censorship visa # 52584 delivered on 19-10-1968.
Producer 'Dino de Laurentiis (I)' refused join the production because according to him any Italian would go to a theater to see a movie about doctors and diseases. The movie had the record at the Italian box office in 1968 beating Kubrik's 2001: A Space Odyssey and Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West.
When the Giuseppe D'Agata novel came out, the Italian Physician Order (Ordine dei Medici) filed a complaint against the author and lost the lawsuit. The same thing happened when first the movie came out.