Luigi Guido Grandi – monk, philosopher and mathematician

Man of religion who advanced mathematical knowledge

Luigi Guido Grande was an
acclaimed mathematician

Luigi Guido Grandi, who published mathematical studies on the cone and the curve, died on this day in 1742 in Pisa.

He had been court mathematician to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo III de’ Medici, and because he was also an engineer, he was appointed superintendent of water for the Duchy.

Grandi was born in 1671 in Cremona and was educated at the Jesuit College in the city.

He joined the Camaldolese monks at Ferrara when he was 16 and a few years later he was sent to the monastery of St Gregory the Great in Rome to complete his studies in philosophy and theology in preparation for taking holy orders.

Having become a professor in both subjects at a monastery in Florence, he became interested in mathematics, which he studied privately.

Grandi soon developed such a reputation in the field of mathematics that he was appointed court mathematician by Cosimo III.

Grandi was involved with the drainage of the
Chiana Valley, south of Arezzo

While also serving as Superintendent of Water at the Medici court, he was involved in the drainage of the Chiana valley, which runs north to south between Arezzo and Orvieto.

In 1709 Grandi visited England, where he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1714 he was named Professor of Mathematics by the University of Pisa.

He published studies on the conical loxodrome and on the curve, which he named versiera from the Latin verb, to turn. The curve was later studied by the female scientist Maria Gaetana Agnesi. Through a mistranslation into English, the curve became known in England as Agnesi’s witch, because the translator mistook the word for curve, for the word for witch.

Grandi was perhaps best known for his work on the rose curve, which he named rhodonea. The mathematician died in Pisa on 4 July 1742.

The Sperlari shop in Cremona specialises in torrone (nougat)

Travel tip:

Cremona, where Grandi was born, is famous for having the tallest bell tower in Italy, il Torrazzo, which measures more than 112 metres in height. As well as being well known for making violins, Cremona also produces confectionery. Negozio Sperlari in Via Solferino specialises in the city’s famous torrone (nougat). This concoction of almonds, honey and egg whites was created in the city to mark the marriage of Bianca Maria Visconti to Francesco Sforza in 1441, when Cremona was given to the bride as part of her dowry.

The Bapistery in Pisa's Campo dei Miracoli

Travel tip:

Pisa, where Grandi was a professor at the university until he died, is famous for its Leaning Tower. The tower is one of the four buildings that make up the cathedral complex in the Field of Miracles (Campo dei Miracoli). The Duomo was the first to be constructed and then the Baptistery was added. While work on the tower was being carried out, a cemetery (Campo Santo) was added. During the summer, the Leaning Tower is open to visitors from 08.30 to 22.00. Tickets to climb the tower are limited and booking in advance is recommended if you want to avoid queuing. For more details, visit www.towerofpisa.org/tickets.

More reading:

Why Einstein nodded his respect to this mathematician from Padua

Scientist who emerged from Galileo's shadow

When Italy needed the world's help to save the Leaning Tower

Also on this day:

1914: The birth of the car designer Giuseppe Bertone

1927: The birth of the actress Gina Lollobrigida

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Guido Banti – physician

Doctor was the first to define leukaemia

Guido Banti was among the first doctors to
understand the disease process in leukaemia

The innovative physician and pathologist Guido Banti was born on this day in 1852 in Montebicchieri in Tuscany.

His work on the spleen led him to discover that a chronic congestive enlargement of the spleen resulted in the premature destruction of red blood cells. Closely related to leukaemia, this was later named 'Banti’s disease' in his honour.

Banti’s father was a physician and sent him to study medicine at the University of Pisa and the Medical School in Florence.

He graduated in 1877 and was appointed an assistant at the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova and also as an assistant in the laboratory of Pathological Anatomy.

The ability to observe patients in bed and then carry out post mortem examinations was to prove fundamental to his work.

Within five years he had become chief of medical services. In 1895, after a five year spell in a temporary post he was appointed Ordinary Professor of Pathological Anatomy in the medical school in Florence. He remained in this post for 25 years.

Banti published the first textbook in Italy on the techniques of bacteriology in 1885.

Banti worked for a while at the Santa Maria Nuova Hospital,
the oldest still-active medical institution in Florence

He studied and also wrote about heart enlargement, the causes of aphasia and hyperplastic gastritis. He spent three years studying cancer cells and published a study of typhoid fever.

In 1895 he wrote about endocarditis and nephritis and atherosclerosis of the kidney.

He studied enlargement of the spleen and wrote a paper describing the condition that would become known as Banti’s disease. He proposed that the enlarged spleen was the cause of red cell destruction which led to anaemia and that only removal of the spleen could stop this process. On his advice, the first splenectomy for haemolytic jaundice was carried out in Florence in 1903.

Banti’s name is still primarily connected with leukaemia and he opposed the views of other scientists about the disease. In 1913 Banti decided that leukaemias are systemic diseases arising from the haematopoietic structures, bone marrow and lymph glands and are the result of the uncontrolled proliferation of staminal blood cells. This accords closely with the modern definition of leukaemia.

Banti died in Florence in 1935 aged 72.

The Church of Santa Lucia in Montebichieri

Travel tip:

Montebichieri, where Guido Banti was born, is a village to the southwest of San Miniato in the province of Pisa in Tuscany. In the centre of the village is the 14th century Church of Santa Lucia and a tower and parts of the original walls still survive from the medieval fortifications. Many of the houses are now empty and abandoned.

The bust of Guido Banti at
the Florence Institute

Travel tip:

There is a bust of Guido Banti in the Institute of Anatomy and Pathology in Florence.  The Institute, established in 1824, is famous for its collection of wax pathological models created in the 19th century, which were invaluable teaching tools in medical schools, where living examples, cadavers, and other visual aids of many pathologies were often scarce. One of the most famous pieces in the museum is the 1851 “leper” model by artist Luigi Calamai.  The museum, which was originally housed at the University of Florence, was moved to the city’s Careggi Hospital in 1859.

Also on this day:

1671: The birth of Venetian composer Tomaso Albinoni

1823: The birth of Pompeii archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli

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Giovanni Aldini - physicist

Professor thought to have given Mary Shelley the idea for Frankenstein

Giovanni Aldini picked up the mantle of his uncle, Luigi
Galvani, in his experiments with bioelectricity

The physicist and professor Giovanni Aldini, whose experiment in trying to bring life to a human corpse is thought to have inspired Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, was born on this day in 1762 in Bologna.

The nephew of Luigi Galvani, who discovered the phenomenon that became known as galvanism, one of Aldini’s goals in life was to build on his uncle’s work in the field of bioelectricity.

Galvani’s discovery that the limbs of a dead frog could be made to move by the stimulation of electricity sparked an intellectual argument with his rival physicist Alessandro Volta that he found uncomfortable. When he was then removed from his academic and public positions after Bologna became part of the French Cisalpine Republic in the late 18th century, Galvani was unable to progress his experiments as he would have liked.

Aldini essentially picked up his uncle’s mantle and was determined to discover whether the effect of an electrical impulse on the body of a frog could be reproduced in a human being.

Aldini conducing experiments in galvanism, as
depicted in a 19th century book

His most famous experiment came in 1803, when he was given permission to test his electrical equipment on the corpse of George Forster shortly after he had been hanged at Newgate Prison in London, following his conviction for the murder of his wife and daughter, whose bodies were found in the Paddington Canal not long after the last sighting of them alive at the nearby Mitre Tavern.

Aldini had chosen to conduct this experiment in England because most other European countries carried out executions by beheading, and he felt needed a corpse that was fully intact.

Forster’s body was taken directly from the gallows to a nearby house, where Aldini conducted experiments using conducting rods and a battery, the existence of which, ironically, he owed to his uncle’s rival, Volta.

In front of an audience of surgeons, Aldini successful made the corpse’s facial muscles contort, causing his jaw to twitch and one eye to open. He was then able to cause the dead body to raise his right arm with a clenched fist, and to produce movement in the thighs and lower legs.

The future Mary Shelley would have been only five at the time yet as she grew up she learned all about Galvani, Volta and Aldini through two friends of her father, Humphry Davy (famously the inventor of the Davy safety lamp) and William Nicholson, who were leading electrical researchers.

Mary Shelley, as portrayed in a miniature
painting by Reginald Easton in 1857

During the summer of 1816, it is known that Mary Shelley was in Geneva with her future husband, the poet Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron, and that among the topics of their conversation was the potential for re-animating a corpse with electricity.

At around the same time, the three friends, along with another writer, John Polidori, decided they would have a competition to see who could write the best horror story.  Mary came up with a tale of a young scientist, Victor Frankenstein, who creates a grotesque, monstrous but humanoid creature, which he brings to life with electrical charges.

The brother of Count Antonio Aldini, a statesman, Aldini followed Galvani in becoming professor of physics at the University of Bologna.

He devoted himself to his scientific work, which was mainly focussed on galvanism, anatomy and its medical applications, along with the construction and illumination of lighthouses, and with experiments for preserving human life and material objects from destruction by fire.

He died in Milan in 1834, bequeathing a considerable sum to found a school of natural science for artisans at Bologna.

A courtyard at the historic Palazzo Poggi in Bologna

Travel tip:

The University of Bologna, the oldest university in continuous use in the world, has sites dotted around the centre of Bologna.  Its headquarters are in the Palazzo Poggi, in Via Zamboni, about 1km (0.62 miles) northeast of the Fountain of Neptune just around the corner from Piazza Maggiore. The palace is adorned with many frescoes painted by Mannerist and early Baroque artists, including Prospero Fontana, Pellegrino Tebaldi and Niccolò dell'Abbate.

The Basilica of San Petronio, with its half-finished facade

Travel tip:

Bologna is a progressive, left-leaning city with a lively student population and considerable history and culture. Italians regard it as one of the country’s most beautiful cities and has the advantage of being not nearly as busy as Rome, Florence and Venice, which tend to the the magnets for overseas visitors.  The Piazza Maggiore, the medieval Asinelli and Garisenda towers and the Basilica of San Petronio, with its half-finished facade - pink marble at the bottom with bare bricks above - are among the main sights.  Another advantage, apart from the lack of crowds, in the summer months are the 45km of porticoed walkways.

More reading:

Luigi Galvani, the father of bioelectricity

Alessandro Volta and the world's first battery

The death of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley


Also on this day:

1926: Airship leaves Rome on mission to North Pole

1991: The Moby Prince ferry disaster


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Innocenzo Manzetti - inventor

Made prototype telephone 33 years ahead of Bell

Innocenzo Manzetti was an inventor of such
energy he could get by on minimal sleep

The inventor Innocenzo Manzetti, credited by some scientific historians as having been the creator of a forerunner of the telephone many years ahead of his compatriot Antonio Meucci and the Scottish-American Alexander Graham Bell, was born on this day in 1826 in Aosta, in northwest Italy.

Manzetti's extraordinary catalogue of inventions included a steam-powered car, a hydraulic water pump, a pendulum watch that would keep going for a whole year and a robot that could play the flute.

But he was a man whose creative talents were not allied to business sense.  Like Meucci, a Florentine emigrant to New York who demonstrated a telephone-like device in 1860 - 16 years before Bell was granted the patent - Manzetti did not patent his device and therefore missed out on the fortune that came the way of Bell.

Research has found that Manzetti may have had the idea for a "vocal telegraph" as early as 1843, as a result of his success with his flute-playing automaton, which he constructed as a life-size model of a man sitting on a chair, inside which were concealed a system of levers, rods and compressed air tubes that enabled his lips and fingers to move on the flute.

This was linked to a program recorded on a cylinder much like those that would become the key component in the self-playing pianos, or pianolas, that were popular in the early part of the 20th century.

Manzetti's automaton

When Manzetti showed off his automaton in public, he went to great lengths to make it appear lifelike, programming it to stand and take a bow at the end of a performance.  He successfully devised a system of wires whereby he could transmit the sound of a piano being played out of view of the audience so that it would appear to come from his automaton.

The natural extension of this was to attempt to transmit his own remote voice, so that the automaton would seem to speak, and there are descriptions in newspapers of the time that spoke of a cornet-like device, containing a magnetized steel needle and a coil of silk-coated copper wire, into which Manzetti spoke.

However, he put the idea aside for two decades and concentrated on other projects.  It is thought that this was because there were imperfections in his system, which could transmit vowel sounds accurately but was not clear enough to make one consonant sound different from another, that he was unable to solve.

He revisited the idea in the 1860s and there were newspaper articles at the time proclaiming his invention of the télégraph parlant. But neither he nor Meucci could meet the high cost of patenting their devices and it was left to Bell to take the glory in 1876.

Nonetheless, there is no detracting from Manzetti's achievements as an inventor, the product of such enormous creative energy that he was said to exist during his most productive phases on only a couple of hours' sleep a night,

Manzetti's house in Aosta on Rue Xavier de Maistre

The hydraulic pump-like mechanism he devised in 1855 to remove water from the previously unworkable Ollomont copper mines of the Aosta Valley meant the mines were put back to use and remained in service until 1945.

The steam-powered car he built in 1864 came 27 years before Léon Serpollet built and demonstrated one in Paris.

Manzetti also built a wooden flying parrot for his daughter that could hover for two or three minutes before settling down again, created several instruments he used in his work as a land surveyor and invented a telescope based on three converging lenses that produced such magnification of images that the user could observe the movement of a small lizard, for example, at a distance of more than 7km (4 miles).

Nonetheless, he was not a wealthy man. Married to Rosa Sofia Anzola, he had two daughters, neither of whom survived beyond childhood, and himself died in impoverished circumstances in 1877, aged only 51.

The beautiful entrance facade to
the cathedral in Aosta

Travel tip:

Aosta is the principal municipality in the Aosta Valley, an autonomous bilingual French-Italian region close to the Italian entrance to the Mont-Blanc Tunnel, about 110km (68 miles) northwest of Turin. Its position in relation to the Great and Little St Bernard passes made it a place of strategic importance and there are the remains of a Roman military camp and an amphitheatre as well as the Arch of Augustus.  The cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta and San Giovanni Battista boasts a beautiful Renaissance facade decorated with frescoes and high reliefs dedicated to the Life of the Virgin.

Hotels in Aosta by Booking.com

The Centro Saint-Bénin in Via Jean-Boniface Festaz

Travel tip:

Since April 2012, there has been a permanent exhibition dedicated to Manzetti and his inventions in a hall of the Centro Saint-Bénin in Aosta, where his the automaton, which is still visited today by engineering scientists from all over the world, can be seen at close quarters.  The main square outside the town's railway station is named after Manzetti.

More reading:

Antonio Meucci's claim to be the true father of communications

How Marconi made the world's first radio communication

Alessandro Volta - creator of first electrical battery

Also on this day:

1861: The birth of the Kingdom of Italy

1925: The birth of acclaimed actor Gabriele Ferzetti

1939: The birth of brilliant football coach Giovanni Trapattoni

(Picture credits: Automaton, Manzetti's house by Patafisik; Aosta cathedral by Laurom; Centro Saint-Bénin by Tenam2; via Wikimedia Commons)

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Pietro Andrea Mattioli – doctor

The first botanist to describe the tomato

As a physician, Pietro Andrea Mattioli described the
first documented case of cat allergy

Doctor and naturalist Pietro Andrea Gregorio Mattioli was born on this day in 1501 in Siena.

As the author of an illustrated work on botany, Mattioli provided the first documented example of an early variety of tomato that was being grown and eaten in Europe.

He is also believed to have described the first case of cat allergy, when one of his patients was so sensitive to cats that if he went into a room where there was a cat he would react with agitation, sweating and pallor.

Mattioli received his medical degree at the University of Padua in 1523 and practised his profession in Siena, Rome, Trento and Gorizia.

He became the personal physician to Ferdinand II, Archduke of Austria, in Prague and to Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor, in Vienna.

While working for the imperial court it is believed he tested the effects of poisonous plants on prisoners, which was a common practice at the time.

Mattioli's book about the work of
Greek physician Dioscorides

Mattioli’s interest in botany led him to describe 100 new plants and document the medical botany of his time in his Discorsi (Commentaries) on the Materia Medica of Dioscorides, a Greek physician and botanist. Dioscorides had written a five-volume encyclopaedia about herbal medicine and other medicinal substances that had been widely read for 1,500 years.

The first edition of Mattioli’s work appeared in 1544 in Italian. There were several later editions and translations into Latin, French, Czech and German.

He added descriptions of plants not in the original work and not of any known medical use. The woodcuts in Mattioli’s work were of a high standard, helping the reader to identify the plants.

The Scottish botanist Robert Brown later named a plant genus Matthiola in his honour.

Mattioli died in 1577 during a visit to Trento, now the capital city of Trentino-Alto Adige.

Siena's Piazza del Campo viewed from the air

Travel tip:

Mattioli’s birthplace, Siena, is famous for its shell-shaped Piazza del Campo, where the Palio di Siena takes place twice each year. It was established in the 13th century as an open marketplace and is now regarded as one of the finest medieval squares in Europe. The red brick paving, fanning out from the centre in nine sections, was put down in 1349. The city’s Duomo was designed and completed between 1215 and 1263 on the site of an earlier structure. It has a beautiful façade built in Tuscan Romanesque style using polychrome marble.

The Piazza del Duomo in Trento

Travel tip:

Trento is a city on the Adige river, which was formerly part of Austria-Hungary. It is famous as the location of the Council of Trent in the 16th century, an ecumenical council that led to a Catholic resurgence in the wake of the Protestant Reformation.  It was annexed by Italy in 1919 and is now one of the country’s most prosperous cities.

Hotels in Trento from Booking.com



More reading:

Ulisse Aldrovandi - the 'father' of natural history

How Prospero Alpini 'discovered' the coffee-drinking habit that took Italy by storm in the 18th century

Cesare Battisti - the patriot who campaigned for Trentino

Also on this day:

1863: The birth of writer and patriot Gabriele D'Annunzio

1921: The birth of Fiat patriarch Gianni Agnelli

(Picture credit: Piazza del Duomo by Casalmaggiore Provincia via Wikimedia Commons)

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Augusto Odone – medical pioneer

Father who invented ‘Lorenzo’s Oil’ for sick son

Augusto Odone devoted his life to caring
for his stricken son Lorenzo

Augusto Odone, the father who invented a medicine to treat his incurably ill son despite having no medical training, was born on this day in 1933 in Rome.

Odone’s son, Lorenzo, was diagnosed with the rare metabolic condition ALD (Adrenoleukodystrophy) at the age of six. Augusto and his American-born wife, Michaela, were told that little could be done and that Lorenzo would suffer from increasing paralysis and probably die within two years.

Refusing simply to do nothing, the Odones, who lived in Washington, where Augusto was an economist working for the World Bank, threw themselves into discovering everything that was known about the condition and the biochemistry of the nervous system, contacting every doctor, biologist and researcher they could find who had researched the condition and assembled them for a symposium.

Drawing on this pooled knowledge, and with the help of Hugo Moser, a Swiss-born professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, they eventually came up with the idea of combining extracts of olive oil and rapeseed oil in a medicine that would break down the long-chain fatty acids in the human body that were considered a major cause of the nerve damage suffered by people with ALD.

The medicine, which seemed to slow the progression of Lorenzo’s disease, soon became known as Lorenzo’s Oil. Against all odds, Lorenzo survived until the day after his 30^th birthday, having lived more than 20 years beyond his doctors’ gloomy forecasts.

Lorenzo (left), with his father, lived for 22 years longer
 than doctors predicted after his diagnosis

The Odones, moreover, were convinced that Lorenzo drew some pleasure from being alive. He showed signs that he enjoyed music and listening to stories and responded to voices, even though for the last 22 years of his life he was paralysed, blind and unable to speak, could only be fed through a tube and required round-the-clock nursing care. He communicated by blinking and wiggling his fingers.

Their story attracted attention all over the world.  It became the subject of a film, entitled Lorenzo’s Oil, directed by George Miller and starring Nick Nolte and Susan Sarandon, that was a box office hit and was nominated for two Academy Awards.

The movie attracted criticism from medical experts for portraying scientists as unfeeling, although the Odones had been outspoken in their comments about the response of the medical establishment to their attempts to find a treatment.

Doctors also criticised the film for suggesting that Lorenzo’s Oil was a cure for ALD, although the medicine is still used today and has been shown to delay the onset of symptoms if prescribed before they develop.

Lorenzo seemed a normal
child until the age of four

Augusto Odone, whose mother was a novelist and his father a general in the Italian army, grew up in Gamalero, a village in Piedmont, not far from Alessandria.  He was educated at the University of Rome before attending the University of Kansas on a scholarship.  He joined the World Bank in 1969.

He devoted much of his life to raising money for research before deciding in 2010, two years after Lorenzo’s death, to move back to Italy, settling in Acqui Terme, about 20km (12 miles) from Gamalero.  He died there in 2013, aged 80, having survived Michaela, his second wife, by 13 years.

His daughter by his first marriage is the Kenyan-born English journalist and novelist, Christina Odone.

La Bollente in Acqui Terme

Travel tip:

Acqui Terme in Piedmont, which is situated about 100km (62 miles) southeast of Turin, is a town of just over 20,000 people best known for the local wine, Brachetto d’Acqui, and for the hot sulphur springs that were discovered during the Roman era, which bubble up at a temperature of 75 degrees Celsius, emerging at a site in the centre of the town where a small pavilion, called La Bollente, was built in 1870.

Hotels in Acqui Terme by Booking.com

Travel tip:

Alessandria, a city of 94,000 people about equidistant from Turin and Milan, is notable for the Cittadella, the 18^th century star fort across the Tanaro river from the city, which is one of the best preserved fortifications of that era, with the outer wall and defensive towers still intact.  It is also home to a military museum that contains more than 1500 uniforms, weapons and other memorabilia from the Italian Army.

Find a hotel in Alessandria with Tripadvisor

More reading:

How Renato Dulbecco's research led to greater understanding of cancer

The first physiologist to explain human movement

Camillo Golgi - the greatest nueroscientist of the 19th century

Also on this day:

1483: The birth of historian Francesco Guicciardini

1853: Verdi's La Traviata is performed for the first time

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Giovanni Battista Morgagni - anatomist

The father of modern pathological anatomy

Giovanni Battista Morgagni taught at the
University of Padua for 56 years

Anatomist Giovanni Battista Morgagni, who is credited with turning pathology into a science, was born on this day in 1682 in Forlì in Emilia-Romagna.

Morgagni was professor of Anatomy at the University of Padua for 56 years and taught thousands of medical students during his time there.

He was sent by his parents to study philosophy and medicine at the University of Bologna when he was 18 and he graduated as a doctor from both faculties.

In 1706 he published his work, Adversaria Anatomica, which was to be the first volume of a series and helped him become known throughout Europe as an accurate anatomist.

He succeeded to the chair of theoretical medicine at the University of Padua in 1712 and was to teach medicine there until his death in 1771.

Morgagni was promoted to the chair of anatomy after his first three years in Padua, following in the footsteps of many illustrious scholars. He brought out five more volumes of his Adversaria Anatomica during his early years in Padua.

Morgagni's Adversaria Anatomica helped
establish his reputation

In 1761, when he was nearly 80, he brought out the work that was to make pathological anatomy into a science – De Sedibus et causis morborum per anotomem indagatis (Of the seats and cause of diseases investigated through anatomy). This work, which contained the records of 646 dissections, was later reprinted several times in its original Latin and translated into French, English and German.

Morgagni was the first anatomist to understand and to demonstrate the absolute necessity of basing diagnosis, prognosis and treatment on an exact and comprehensive knowledge of anatomical conditions. His precision, thoroughness and freedom from bias are modern scientific qualities and he was also a widely respected clinician who maintained an active practice. His treatise was to lead to steady progress in pathology and practical medicine.

Morgagni had married a noble lady from Forlì during his early years in Padua who bore him three sons and 12 daughters. He died at the age of 89 in Padua.

He is today regarded as the father of modern pathological anatomy as his works helped to make it into an exact science.

Forlì's Palazzo Poste e Telegrafi in Piazza Saffi

Travel tip:

Forlì, where Morgagni was born, is today a prosperous city with a beautiful main square, Piazza Saffi, named after Aurelio Saffi, a radical republican who was a prominent figure in the Risorgimento. The square is dominated by the monumental Palazzo Poste e Telegrafi, designed by Cesare Bazzani in 1932 to celebrate the Fascist regime. Benito Mussolini was born in nearby Predappio and blatantly favoured the area of his birth with imposing new buildings.

Hotels in Forlì from Booking.com

Palazzo del Bò in the centre of the city is the
main building of the University of Padua

Travel tip:

The University of Padua, where Morgagni taught for most of his life, was established in 1222 and is one of the oldest in the world, second in Italy only to the University of Bologna. The main university building, Palazzo del Bò in Via VIII Febbraio in the centre of Padua, used to house the medical faculty. You can take a guided tour to see the pulpit used by Galileo when he taught at the university between 1592 and 1610.


More reading:

Paolo Mascagni, the first physician to map the human lymphatic system

How Gabriele Falloppio made key discoveries about human reproduction

Hieronymus Fabricius, the father of embyology

Also on this day:

1707: The birth of playwright Carlo Goldoni

1873: The birth of the great operatic tenor Enrico Caruso

2003: The death of comic actor Alberto Sordi


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Paolo Mascagni – physician

Scientist was first to map the human lymphatic system

Paolo Mascagni studied geology before turning
to human science and anatomy

The physician Paolo Mascagni, whose scientific research enabled him to create the first map of the complete human lymphatic system, was born on this day in 1755 in Pomarance, a small town in Tuscany about 40km (25 miles) inland from the western coastline.

Mascagni described his findings in a book with detailed illustrations of every part of the lymphatic system he had identified, which was to prove invaluable to physicians wanting to learn more about a part of the human body vital to the regulation of good health.

He also commissioned the sculptor Clemente Susini to create a full-scale model in wax of the lymphatic system, which can still be seen at the Museum of Human Anatomy at the University of Bologna.

Later he created another significant tome, his Anatomia Universa, which comprises 44 enormous copperplate illustrations that set out to bring together in one book the full extent of human knowledge about the anatomy of the human body.  The ‘book’ in the event was so large it was never bound, each plate measuring more than 3ft 6ins (1.07m) by 2ft 6ins (0.76m), designed in such a way that those from the same plane of dissection can be placed together and show the whole body in life size.

Mascagni was the son of Aurelio Mascagni and Elisabetta Burroni, both belonging to ancient noble families from Chiusdino, a village in the province of Siena.

An illustration from Mascagni's celebrated
book on the human lymphatic system

He studied at the University of Siena, where his teacher of anatomy was Pietro Tabarrini, and graduated in philosophy and medicine in 1771. By his final year, he had been appointed assistant to Tabarrini and succeeded his mentor as Professor of Anatomy after blindness forced him to retire.

As a young man, Mascagni had been keen on geology and wrote a number of papers on the thermal springs of Siena and Volterra. Later, he would successfully identify boric acid in the waters and suggest ways to produce from it the industrial compound now known as borax.

After graduating, his focus turned to the human lymphatic system, feeling that he owed it to Tabarrini to do what he could to advance his teacher’s research into the workings of the human body. He decided that he would not work in clinical medicine but devote himself entirely to teaching and research.

His work was interrupted for a while by the political upheaval of the late 18^th century, when Tuscany was occupied by the French. He became involved in politics somewhat reluctantly, becoming Superintendent of the Arts, Sciences and Charitable Institutions of Siena, and this placed him in constant conflict with the French authorities over their seizing of personal and public property.

Unfortunately, his involvement with the French was misinterpreted when Austria regained control of the area. Accused of having Jacobin sympathies, he was arrested and imprisoned for seven months.

The statue of Mascagni in the courtyard of the
Uffizi in Florence, where he lived for some years

On his release, he was appointed a professor of anatomy at the University of Pisa and began lecturing at the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence before becoming a full professor at the University of Florence.

In his research into the lymphatic system, Mascagni perfected a technique whereby he injected mercury as a contrast medium into the peripheral lymphatic networks of a human cadaver and by following the mercury’s flow to other parts of the system was able to produce detailed diagrams and models.

This brought him fame all over Europe, yet he did not limit himself to merely describing the anatomy of the lymphatic system.  By his research into its physiology and pathology he was able to highlight its importance in fighting disease in the human body, the understanding of which helped in the evolution of new treatments.

Mascagni died in 1815 during a stay at his estate in Castelletto, near Chiusdino, the village near Siena where his family originated and where he spent most of his free time. He had contracted a pernicious fever, probably malaria.

His memory has been commemorated in several ways. The street where he was born in Pomerance is now called Via Paolo Mascagni; the hamlet where the family lived, 33km (20 miles) southwest of Siena, is now known as Castelletto Mascagni, and there is another Via Paolo Mascagni in nearby Chiusdino.

A statue of Paolo Mascagni can be found in a niche in the courtyard of the Uffizi in Florence, as one of the great men of Tuscany.  His house in Florence was in Via Fiesolana.  There is also a monument to him in the Accademia dei Fisiocritici in Siena, of which he was president.

One of the medieval gates into the town of Pomarance

Travel tip:

The town of Pomarance, where Mascagni was born, sits on a hill overlooking Val di Cecina, on the border between the provinces of Pisa, 80km (50 miles) to the north, and Siena, 69km (43 miles) to the east. The main square, Piazza de Larderel, is named after Francois Jacques de Lardarel, a 19^th century French engineer who worked in the area on the exploitation of geothermal energy from the steam emitted by lagoons in the area.

The ancient village of Chiusdino occupies a hilltop position

Travel tip:

The ancient village of Chiusdino dates back to the seventh or eighth century, when it was a Longobard settlement, sitting on the top of a hill, surrounded by walls. Much of the history of the town surrounds the legend of San Galgano, who was an arrogant, licentious son of a local feudal lord in the 12^th century who changed his ways after a supposed visit from Saint Michael the Archangel, who told him he must give up his excesses, prompting Galgano to say it would be easier to cut a rock with a sword. As if to prove it, he launched a sword thrust at a rock and was amazed when the blade plunged into the rock as easily as a knife into butter. He knelt to pray and vowed to become a hermit. The sword in the rock remains on display in a chapel, the Rotonda della Spada, that was built around it.

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Camillo Golgi – neuroscientist

Nobel prize winner whose name lives on in medical science

Camillo Golgi expanded knowledge of
the human nervous system

Camillo Golgi, who is recognised as the greatest neuroscientist and biologist of his time, died on this day in 1926 in Pavia.

He was well known for his research into the central nervous system and discovering a staining technique for studying tissue, sometime called Golgi’s method, or Golgi’s staining.

In 1906, Golgi and a Spanish biologist, Santiago Ramon y Cajal, were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in recognition of their work on the structure of the nervous system.

Golgi was born in 1843 in Corteno, a village in the province of Brescia in Lombardy.

The village was later renamed Corteno Golgi in his honour.

In 1860 Golgi went to the University of Pavia to study medicine. After graduating in 1865 he worked in a hospital for the Italian army and as part of a team investigating a cholera epidemic in the area around Pavia.

He resumed his academic studies under the supervision of Cesare Lombroso, an expert in medical psychology, and wrote a thesis about mental disorders. As he became more and more interested in experimental medicine he started attending the Institute of General Pathology headed by Giulio Bizzozero, who was to influence Golgi’s research publications. They became close friends and Golgi later married his niece, Lina Aletti.

Financial pressure led Golgi to work at the Hospital for the Chronically Ill in Abbiategrasso near Milan and while he was there he set up a simple laboratory in a former hospital kitchen.

A statue within the campus of Pavia University
commemorates Golgi's life and work

It was in his improvised laboratory that he made his most notable discoveries. His major achievement was the development of staining technique for studying nerve tissue called the black reaction, using potassium bichromate and silver nitrate, which was more accurate than other methods and was later to become known as Golgi’s method.

In 1885 he joined the faculty of histology at the University of Pavia and then later became Professor of Histology. He also became Professor of Pathology at the San Matteo hospital.  His connection with the university is commemorated with a statue within the grounds, while a plaque marks the house in nearby Corso Strada Nuova where he lived.

He was rector of the University of Pavia for two separate periods and during the First World War he directed the military hospital, Collegio Borromeo, in Pavia.

Golgi retired in 1818 and continued his research in a private laboratory. He died on 21 January1926.

In 1900 he had been named as a Senator by King Umberto I. He received honorary doctorates from many universities and was commemorated on a stamp by the European community in 1994.

The Golgi apparatus, the Golgi tendon organ, the Golgi tendon reflex and certain nerve cells are all named after him.

The Golgi museum in Via Brescia, Corteno Golgi

Travel tip:

Corteno Golgi, a village of around 2,000 people is situated in the High Camonica Valley, about 100km (62 miles) north of Brescia in the Orobie Alps in Lombardy. It has a museum dedicated to Camillo Golgi in Via Brescia. For more information visit www.museogolgi.it.

The covered bridge over the Ticino river at Pavia

Travel tip:

Pavia, where Golgi lived for a large part of his life, is a city in Lombardy, about 46km (30 miles) south of Milan, known for its ancient university, which was founded in 1361, and its famous Certosa, a magnificent monastery complex north of the city that dates back to 1396. A pretty covered bridge over the River Ticino leads to Borgo Ticino, where the inhabitants claim to be the true people of Pavia and are of Sabaudian origin.

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Guglielmo Libri – book thief

Nobleman stole more than 30,000 books and documents

Guglielmo Libri is thought to have stolen more
than 30,000 books, manuscripts and letters

The notorious 19^th century thief Guglielmo Libri, who stole tens of thousands of historic books, manuscripts and letters, many of which have never been found, was born on this day in 1803 in Florence.

A distinguished and decorated academic, Libri was an avid collector of historic documents whose passion for adding to his collections ultimately became an addiction he could not satisfy by legal means alone.

He stole on a large scale from the historic Laurentian Library in Florence but it was after he was appointed Chief Inspector of French Libraries in 1841 – he had been a French citizen since 1833 – that his nefarious activities reached their peak.

As the man responsible for cataloguing valuable books and precious manuscripts across the whole of France, Libri had privileged access to the official archives of many cities and was able to spend many hours in dusty vaults completely unhindered and unsupervised.

He was in a position to “borrow” such items as he required in the interests of research with no pressure to return them. Where the removal of a book or document was forbidden, he would smuggle them out under the huge cape that he insisted on wearing – on the grounds of supposedly poor health – even in the height of summer.

Although he began to arouse suspicion, it was not until 1848 that a warrant was issued in France for his arrest.  Tipped off, Libri had already fled to London, taking with him about 18 trunks containing more than 30,000 documents.

Some 72 letters written by Descartes were
thought to have been stolen by Libri

These included 72 letters written by the great French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes, as well as the Tours Pentateuch, a late sixth or early seventh-century illuminated Latin manuscript of the first five books of the Old Testament, which he stole from the Library of Tours.

With no extradition agreement existing between France and Britain at that time, Libri was thus able to evade justice, even though he was tried in absentia in 1850 and sentenced to 10 years’ jail.

Indeed, he lived a good life in London, mainly by selling books, often to members of the English nobility, or else at auction.

The Tours Pentateuch later became known as the Ashburnham Pentateuch after it was sold to the 4^th Earl of Ashburnham by Libri in 1847.  Two auction sales in 1861 are said to have netted him more than one million francs.

Born Count Guglielmo Libri Carucci dalla Sommaja, he was a precocious academic who began studying law at the University of Pisa at the age of 16 before switching to mathematics and being appointed professor of mathematical physics at the age of just 20.

He made many friends in Paris during a sabbatical visit in 1824 and when his involvement back in Italy with the secret revolutionary plotters known as the Carbonari led to the threat of arrest, it was to Paris that he escaped.

Libri's History of Mathematical Sciences
drew on stolen documents

He became a French citizen in 1833 and his academic stock continued to rise. He obtained a professorship at the Collège de France and in 1834 he was elected as assistant professor in the calculus of probabilities at the Sorbonne and elevated to the French Academy of Sciences.

Between 1838 and 1841, Libri wrote a four-volume tome entitled History of the Mathematical Sciences in Italy from the Renaissance of literature to the 17th Century, drawing from 1800 manuscripts and books by Galileo, Descartes, Leibniz and others which he claimed were in his personal collection. It was discovered later that many had been stolen from the Laurentian Library.

He cultivated contacts in high places to protect his reputation. His appointment as Chief Inspector of French Libraries, for example, came about through his friendship with the influential French Chief of Police, François Guizot.

Libri remained in England until 1868, when his declining health persuaded him to return to Italy.  He died the following year in Fiesole, just outside Florence, at the age of 66.

Although many of the huge number of items Libri stole have never been returned, having been forgotten about or left to gather dust in private libraries and storerooms, one of the missing Descartes letters, written in 1641 to Father Marin Marsenne, the priest and polymath who oversaw the publication of his Meditations on First Philosophy, turned up at Haverford College in Pennsylvania in 2010.

The Laurentian Library - the long building in the middle of
this picture - was fitted out to a design by Michelangelo

Travel tip:

The Laurentian Library – the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana – dates back to 1523, when the Medici pope Clement VII commissioned it to be built in a cloister of the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence, which is situated between the Duomo and Santa Maria Novella railway station. Home to some 11,000 manuscripts and 4,500 historic books, it was built to designs by Michelangelo in Mannerist style and is considered one of his greatest achievements, not only for elegance of its architectural features but for the innovative use for space to maximise the library’s capacity without detracting from its aesthetic beauty.

The remains of the Roman amphitheatre at Fiesole 

Travel tip:

Fiesole, a town of around 14,000 inhabitants, is situated about 8km (5 miles) northeast of Florence on a hill offering panoramic views. It was built on the site of an Etruscan city probably founded in the eighth or ninth century BC. In the middle ages it grew to be as powerful as Florence until it was conquered by the latter in 1125 after a series of wars. Among several notable sights is its 11^th century Romanesque Cathedral of St Romulus and many Roman remains, including those of an amphitheatre still used for open-air concerts during the summer.  Historically popular with wealthy Florentines as a place to build their villas, it still has the reputation of an upmarket residential area.

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