Donatella Lippi

Donatella Lippi
University of Florence | UNIFI · Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Psicologia, Area del Farmaco e Salute del Bambino

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198
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Publications

Publications (198)
Article
Full-text available
Much of the fascination surrounding Egyptian civilization is linked to the practice of mummification. In fact, to ensure the preservation of the body, the ancient Egyptians mummified both human and animal subjects. However, mummified animal remains are less well studied, although they represent a significant part of the material culture and history...
Article
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Introduction and aim of the study This contribution explores the many pathologies that plague the existence of the renowned Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) and the impact they had on her character. Methodology and results Moving from a mere pathobiographical reassessment, this note, through historico-medical research, highlights the patient...
Article
The present article reflects on the evolution of clinical medicine throughout time by commenting on Picasso’s painting Science and Charity (1897) through a biomedical lens. The two souls of medicine, namely the cold scientific one and the compassionate one, are examined in their dichotomy and their relationship with today’s concepts of cure and wel...
Article
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This study provides new data which suggest a novel interpretative hypothesis not only on the specific painting, but on the use of bloodletting as medical practice in the Florentine Quattrocento. As a part of a cycle of frescoes devoted to the Seven Corporal Works of Mercy, the examined lunette depicts the “Visit to the sick” in a domestic interior,...
Conference Paper
Research on Ancient Egyptian animal mummies has grown in significance over past decades thanks to the accessibility of new medical imaging technology. In particular, computed tomography (CT) has shown an important role, allowing to find out the secrets hidden underneath the bandages of the mummies. The aim of this paper is to show the importance of...
Preprint
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This study provides new data which suggests a novel interpretative hypothesis not only on the specific painting, but on the use of bloodletting as medical practice in the Florentine Quattrocento. In addition, the technical solutions adopted to implement the measurements campaign are illustrated as an experimental model for remote sensing investigat...
Article
The recent discovery of unpublished documents in the archives of the Camerata hospital, (Florence, I) sheds light on an important chapter in the history of nursing education and the role played by Grace Baxter (1869–1954), of English parentage but born and lived in Florence. The introduction of professional nurses was part of the international move...
Article
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Background and aim: This paper, in the 50th anniversary of the author's death, examines the overall impact and influence of medicine, in particular of infectious diseases, on the literary production of Italian writer and novelist Dino Buzzati (1906-1972). Methods: Analysis of literary sources and historical study. Results and conclusions: Buzz...
Article
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A recent study maintains to have identified a case of severe Graves’ disease in the bronze statue of Cosimo I de’ Medici forged by Benevenuto Cellini (between 1545 and 1547). We carefully examined the artistic sources, the medical primary sources and the paleopathological findings with the aim of showing that Cosimo I de’ Medici (1519-1574) was not...
Book
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I capolavori delle Gallerie degli Uffizi si trasformano in strumenti didattici per Studentesse e Studenti dei Corsi di Laura di area sanitaria e si arricchiscono di nuove chiavi di lettura per visitatori, turisti, curiosi. Il mondo della Medicina, infatti, affiora in queste opere, diventando spunto per originali approfondimenti e per inedite incur...
Article
Background: As the world has challenged/argued with the Covid-19 pandemic over the last two years, there has been an increase in vaccine misinformation. Although immunity against Covid-19 infection is limited to 4-6 months and requires at least three doses of vaccine to be maximally effective, the current vaccination campaign in industrialized coun...
Chapter
Some 150 years ago, pathologists identified “mucosal invasions” in peritoneal organs. The term “adenomyoma” was coined to refer to these epithelial lesions and the surrounding smooth muscle and stroma. Early descriptions featured rare and unusual presentations, but it became increasingly apparent that the presence of ectopic mucosa is relatively fr...
Chapter
There is not a single true history of endometriosis because historians differ in how they process and synthesize past events. However, a history of endometriosis is distinct from that of symptoms such as pain or infertility which have multiple causes. Crucially, a history should focus on endometriosis as defined by its characteristic histological f...
Article
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Objectives: In this communication, we wish to remember the important historical role played by Marcel Proust's father, the now mostly forgotten Achille-Adrien Proust (1834-1903). Study design and methods: His career, scientific interests and, above all, his brilliant intuitions and suggestions in the fight against cholera in the 19th century are...
Article
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Bleeding in newborns and young girls fascinated writers for more than a millennium. Initially, there was confusion between neonatal bleeding, early menstruation due to precocious puberty, and hemorrhage due to disease. During the 19th century descriptions appeared of what is referred to today as ‘neonatal menstruation’ or ‘neonatal uterine bleeding...
Article
This paper examines the views on blood by the medieval poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), shedding light onto his knowledge of the differences between arterial and venous blood. The presentation and natural history of the resulting haemorrhages from both types of blood are as presented in his masterpiece "Divine Comedy". This information is contextu...
Article
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Through microscopy, early researchers identified the epithelium on the inner surfaces of the uterus, cervix and Fallopian tubes. The identification of ectopic epithelium was gradual, starting from the gross pathology study of unusual cystic lesions. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, attention focused on the epithelium as a critical compone...
Article
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Dante places the sinners who promoted scandals, schism, and discord in the ninth Ditch of the Inferno. Among those is also the Prophet Muhammad. Describing the Prophet’s punishment, Dante resorts to technical terms and vulgar expressions. This poetic representation highlights Dante’s medical and anatomical knowledge and reflects 14th c. Christian r...
Article
Gender medicine as a subject began with Bernadine Healy’s 1991 article ‘The Yentl Syndrome’ which showed that women had worse outcomes following heart attacks since their symptoms are different from men. Since then gender-specific clinical research protocols have been progressively included so that evidence for guidelines can be better informed suc...
Article
Résumé Il est certainement trop tôt pour faire le point sur les intuitions du professeur Raoult, et ce n'est d'ailleurs pas le but de ce court article. Néanmoins, l'expérience a montré qu'en période de crise sanitaire sans précédent, les prescriptions se révèlent souvent aventureuses, surtout lorsqu'il s'agit d'un nouveau virus. L'imagination colle...
Article
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President John F. Kennedy (JFK) had a complex medical history that is now thought to be an autoimmune polyglandular syndrome type 2 with Addison’s disease and hypothyroidism. He also had gastrointestinal symptoms from adolescence, which now fit well with coeliac disease. In addition, he had a chronic back problem, which contributed to a chronic pai...
Article
Aim: To confirm that the sixteenth century surgeon-anatomist, Jacopo Berengario da Carpi, used a woman who died of a ruptured uterus as a model for a woodcut of female genital anatomy, and that the presentation was based on the cloak in Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam after visiting the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican whilst he was in Rome. Method: A...
Article
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What is the place of medico-historical cases in the professional practice of the disciplinary field of medicine and biology? How can these patients from the past be used for teaching and continuing medical education? How to justify their place in biomedical publications? In this article, we explain all the legitimacy of paleomedicine, and the need...
Article
Recent paleopathological cases have shown the usefulness of interdisciplinary odontological studies in the investigation of historical figures. A macroscopic examination of the mandible of Saint-Louis (13th c. AD), conserved in the cathedral of Notre-Dame (Paris, France) was carried out, and compared with biographical data about the life and death...
Article
Sir Martin Frobisher (ca 1535-1594), the famous Elizabethan explorer and privateer, sustained a bullet to the outer plate of his ilium from a low-velocity bullet wound fired at close range from an arquebus, an early form of musket. The bullet was removed, but he subsequently died from gas gangrene. This paper looks at the management of this injury...
Presentation
Qualche anno fa, il radiologo R. Gunderman elencava su The Atlantic i sette Classici della Letteratura internazionale che i medici dovrebbero leggere “to always be a student of the human condition”. Tra queste, veniva inserito l’Inferno di Dante Alighieri. Partendo da questa considerazione, gli Autori focalizzano l’attenzione su quegli aspetti dell...
Article
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Many world-renowned scientists and artists had autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We suggest that the French mathematician and physicist Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) also had ASD. As a boy, he demonstrated his mastery of language, mathematics and science. He showed single-mindedness and obsessive interests in the pursuit of science in his younger years a...
Article
Films are useful for medical education and introduce Science fiction movies or historic documentaries and pioneering scientists who developed the field of infectious disease research. Between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, expert talents such as von Behring, Koch, and Ehrlich were present at the Charité Hospital. These individua...
Article
Various samples of human viscera fragments, sponges, and cloth were collected from embalming jars belonging to members of the Medici family of Florence. One jar was labeled with the name Vittoria della Rovere, who died in March of 1694. This jar contained viscera fragments that were identified as a section of collapsed intestine. The intestine of t...
Article
This article reconstructs the steps leading to the identification of the atrioventricular block, from its first descriptions to current studies, highlighting the roles of Arthur Keith (1866–1955) and Martin Flack (1882–1931), who contributed to establish the theoretic basis for electrocardiography.
Article
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The structures of the human hands and feet are shaped by evolution and its effects on the brain, skeleton and other structures, and on behavior. We used measurements obtained of hands and feet from living humans in Europe, the Americas (South and North) and Australia and images of hands and feet in cave art, paintings, and photographs obtained from...
Article
Jacopo Berengario da Carpi (c.1460–c.1530) made several important advances in anatomy, being universally considered the founder of ‘animated anatomy’ (anatomia animata). In addition to being a famous anatomist, Berengario was also a highly regarded surgeon. One of his famous clients was Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino (1492–1519). In 1517, Loren...
Article
Lovesickness has been termed a real disorder, with a specific cause, pathogenesis, and cure: it has been attested to in medical literature since classical times, and may still have a place in current medicine in the frame of psychiatry and humoral disorders. Although in different cultures there is a general agreement on the symptoms, including feve...
Article
Due to civil wars, violence and persecutions, between 2015 and 2016, more than 1.4 million people, from the Middle East and Africa, fled their counties and migrated to Europe. The vast majority of migrants, who have already experienced enormous level of stressors, are faced with dangerous, often lethal, migratory journeys. Those who survive are exp...
Article
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Roderigo Lopez, former Physician-in-Chief to Queen Elizabeth I of England, was a controversial figure in his time and continues to be the subject of controversy. Much has been written about his religious practice, politics, and guilt, or lack thereof, with regard to charges of treason to the Crown. However, the fact remains that Lopez was the only...
Article
Purpose: Assessing patients' unmet supportive care needs is essential in order to prioritize areas of cancer care that require improvement. The aim of the present cross-sectional study was to compare the unmet needs of cancer patients in different stages of the disease and care process (diagnosis, treatments following diagnosis, follow-up and/or r...
Article
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Born in Portugal and the son of Marranos (Christianized Jews from Spain), Eliahu de Luna Montalto lived during a particularly harsh period for the Jewish people. Throughout Europe, the situation for Jews was unfavorable; laws had been passed forbidding them to live in England for the past 300 years, and for the past 200 years in France. Additionall...
Article
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Purpose: The Needs Evaluation Questionnaire (NEQ) is a self-administered instrument with 23 dichotomous items that is used both in oncology clinical practice and in research. It was originally developed for use in setting of hospitalization. The aim of the present study was to assess the factor structure of the NEQ in an outpatient oncology sample...
Article
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Cholera, Page 1 of 2 Abstract Cholera is an acute and often fatal disease of the gastrointestinal tract. In its typical epidemic form, it presents with profuse watery diarrhea and often leads to dehydration and eventually the death of an untreated patient within a few hours ( 1 ). The causative agent of cholera is a bacterium known as Vibrio chol...
Article
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Deformity of the breast and axilla observed in famous paintings is a fascinating field for the medico-artists. The attempt of a retrospective diagnosis of breast tumors is highly challenging. This paper deals with a Rubens painting portraying the heroine Judith with a visible but previously unreported left breast mass. Though speculative, the prese...
Article
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Judith was a legendary Hebrew heroine who beheaded the general Holofernes and saved the children of Israel from destruction by the Assyrian army. In the Book of Judith, which is still present in the Catholic and Orthodox Christian Bibles, Judith is presented as an illustrious woman who defeated the enemy using her virtue and fortitude. The present...