Background

Giovanni Maria Lancisi was born on October 26, 1654, in Rome, Italy. He was the son of a wealthy bourgeois family; his parents were Bartolomeo Lancisi and Anna Maria Borgiania.

Education

Following preparatory studies, Lancisi took courses in philosophy at the Collegio Romano but soon realized that his real vocation lay in medicine and natural history. He, therefore, abandoned theology and entered the Sapienza to study medicine. He graduated in 1672 at the age of eighteen - young even for those times. After obtaining his degree, Lancisi continued to study medicine independently.

Career

In 1675 Lancisi was appointed doctor at the Hospital of Santo Spirito; in 1678 he was nominated to membership in the Collegio del Salvatore; and in 1684 he was appointed a professor of anatomy at the Sapienza, where he taught for thirteen years. At the same time, Lancisi became increasingly eminent in the papal court. In 1688 Pope Innocent IX made him pontifical doctor - a post he was to fill, if not always officially, under succeeding popes - and delegated him, as a representative of Cardinal Altieri, to head the pontifical committee for conferring degrees in the medical college.

In 1706 Pope Clement XI asked Lancisi to examine a mysterious increase in the number of sudden deaths, which had assumed the proportions of an epidemic. The following year Lancisi responded by publishing De subitaneis mortibus, in which he dealt in a masterly manner with the problems of cardiac pathology; he extended his study of the subject in a second book, De motu cordis et aneurysmatibus, published in 1728. Lancisi demonstrated in his first book that sudden deaths were often due to hypertrophy and dilatation of the heart, and to various kinds of valve defects. In the later book on aneurysms, he showed many heart lesions to be syphilitic in nature and gave a good clinical description of syphilis of the heart.

Lancisi also did important research on malaria, which was epidemic in Rome to such an extent that those who could fled the city during the hot months. Drawing upon the work of Fracastoro, Lancisi pointed out that the fevers afflicting Rome and the surrounding countryside were closely related to the presence of swamps, which encouraged the multiplying of mosquitoes. By a brilliant intuition, Lancisi attributed the spread of the disease to these insects, and strongly advocated the draining of the swamps - unfortunately without success. He was more effective in bringing the controversial treatment of malaria by cinchona bark into common practice. He made other significant epidemiological studies on influenza and cattle plague (rinderpest).

Lancisi was also successful in persuading Pope Clement XI to acquire Eustachi’s anatomical tables, which had remained unpublished since the latter’s death. Lancisi had them printed at his own expense, together with a comprehensive summary. During his life, he himself collected a personal medical library of considerable size (over 20,000 volumes) and interest, which he generously donated to the Hospital of Santo Spirito to be used for the education of the doctors and surgeons of that hospital.

Achievements

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  Giovanni Maria Lancisi, perhaps the greatest Italian clinician of his generation, made numerous important contributions to anatomy, cardiology, and epidemiology. He was able, through the study of epidemiology and anatomy, to establish a correlation between the presence of mosquitoes and the prevalence of malaria. It was him who introduced the word malaria. Physician and historian Saul Jarcho claimed that Lancisi also deserves to be considered "the true founder of cardiovascular pathology and one of the founding fathers of clinical cardiology."
  
  The Santo Spirito library was opened in 1716; now named for Lancisi, it constitutes a collection of basic importance for the history of medicine. By Lancisi’s will, all his own papers and manuscripts were also deposited in it.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Tabulae anatomicae clarissimi viri Bartholomaei Eustachii quas praefatione notisque illustravit Jo. Maria Lancisius 1722

Membership

Lancisi was a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the Royal Society.

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  Foreign member

  German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina , Germany

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  Fellow

  Royal Society , United Kingdom

Connections

Lancisi probably was married, but nothing is known about his own family.

Father:

Bartolomeo Lancisi

Mother:

Anna Maria Borgiania

Acquaintance:

Pope Innocent IX

Acquaintance:

Pope Clement XI

References

• Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Volume 7
  1973