Antonio di Paolo Benivieni (1443–1502) was a Florentine physician who pioneered the use of the autopsy and many medical historians have considered him a founder of pathology.

His father Paolo was a nobleman, notary and a member, alongside his wife Nastagia de’ Bruni, of a prominent and wealthy Florentine family from S. Giovanni.

He was the first of five children alongside Domenico, theology reader at the University of Pisa, and Girolamo, famous poet and scholar.

[3] The beginning of his activity as a doctor can be dated to around 1470, since Girolamo, in the epistle to Giovanni Rosati, writes that his brother went "medicating for about thirty-two years".

In Florence Benivieni soon acquired a great reputation for safety in diagnoses, for the wise use of drugs and above all for his skill as a surgeon.

Due to a lack of data, it is not possible to establish the year in which Benivieni was enrolled in the “Arte dei medici e degli speziali”.

Antonio Benivenio patri philosopho ac doctor sibi posterisque Michael Benivenius posuit.

However, it was only at the end of the fifteenth century, after the Church and governments granted the authorisation for the free exercise of anatomical dissection, that the autopsy, aimed at knowing the cause of death, became a common practice both in hospitals and in private houses.

It will be this same intuition that after two centuries will inspire Giovanni Battista Morgagni in the compilation of the work that marks the beginning of pathological anatomy “De sedibus et causis morborum per anatomen indagatis" (1761).

[6][5] In the work of Benivieni are reported some of the most important pathological anatomy representations, such as the discovery of gallbladder stones, a peritoneal abscess, a stomach and intestine cancer, an intestinal perforation (the first described in the history of medicine), and a megacolon; he was the first to objectively study teratology, and also in the clinical field he had a very important contribution with his studies on helminthology and on the transmission of syphilis from the mother to the fetus.

[3] The title would appear to have been suggested by Celsus's " Abdditae morborum causae", in these writings the observations of Benivieni imply that he knew about medicine, surgery and obstetrics.

[8] Some of the protocols which resemble the ones used nowadays in autopsy are described in De Abditis Morborum Causis ("The Hidden Causes of Disease ), which is now considered one of the first works in the science of pathology.

This is one of the reasons why he has been referred to as the "father of pathologic anatomy.” [2] The observations, which are about 111, are mainly clinical and yet stand out for Beninvieni's skills in medicine, surgery and obstetrics.

III); on the bone resection he performed on a young girl (n. XXV); on a dead fetus which he extracted with the hook (n. XXIX); on the vascular connections (n. LXVIII); on lithotripsy (n. LXXX); the various teratological observations are also important.

[3][5] Furthermore, other interesting pathological observations to point out are: the presence of an abscess between the laminae of the mesentery in a young woman who suffered from violent pains in the abdomen; narrowing of the intestine with enlargement and hardening of its walls (possibly a cancer) in a woman subject to colic and constipation; a cancer of a pylorus, described as scirrhous and constricted in a man prone to chronic vomiting.

[3][8] The great importance of Benivieni's work, for which he obtained the appellant of "father of pathological anatomy", consists in the association of observations carried out during clinical cases and necropsy.

The anatomical-clinical method started by Benivieni, will slowly develop in the following centuries and culminates with Giovanni Battista Morgagni.