University of Pisa

Faculty Member, DIVISION OF PALEOPATHOLOGY. Department of Oncology, Transplants and Advanced Technologies in Medicine.

Professor

Medical School

About

I am Professor of History of Medicine at Medical School, of Paleopathology and Funerary Archaeology at University of Pisa. In addition to general Paleopathology, my researches regard mummies, paleonutrition and ancient bacteria and viruses. I used, and I am using, different modern biomedical techniques (EM and immunohistochemistry) to study Italian, Peruvian and Egyptian mummies. Some discoveries: in 1986, smallpox virus in 16th century Italian mummy; in 1989, syphilitic treponemes in Italian mummy of the same age; in 1992, Trypanosoma cruzi in pre-Columbian mummy with megavisceral syndrome; in 1996, K-ras mutation in the adenocarcinoma of Ferrante I of Aragon, a king of Naples of 15th century; in 2003, a sequence of Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) in Renaissance Italian mummy; in 2004, digitalis poisoning in the natural mummy of Cangrande della Scala, lord of Verona (1291-1329); in 2010, Plasmodium falciparum and Leishmania sp. in the Medici Grand Dukes of Florence. The most important series of mummies: the Abbey of S. Domenico Maggiore in Naples (15th-16th centuries), the Dead Chapel of S. Maria della Grazia in Comiso, Sicily (18th-19th centuries) and the Grand Dukes of Medici in the Basilica of S. Lorenzo in Florence (16th-18th centuries).

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