Julius Caesar''s Disease

About Francesco Maria GalassiHutan Ashrafian

Francesco Maria Galassi MD is a paleopathologist at Zurich Universitys Institute of Evolutionary Medicine where he serves as Assistant and Principal Investigator of the Italian Paleopathology Project. He graduated from the University of Bologna and has collected research experiences at the University of Oxford and Imperial College London. Besides studying osteological remains and mummies he specialises in the analysis of ancient texts in order to identify the historical presentation and evolution of diseases throughout history. Amongst his most acclaimed studies the causes of death of Alaric I and Giovanni Boccaccio. Aged only 27 Francesco Galassi is one of the youngest palaeopathologists in the world and already an expert in the field of palaeomedicine. Francescos studies have received worldwide attention in quality papers such Forbes Magazine The Guardian The Telegraph and he regularly features in the press and radio-TV programs as commentator of paleopathological research. Hutan Ashrafian BSc Hons MBBS MBA PhD MRCS is a surgeon historian systems biologist biostatistician paleopathologist and philosopher. He is currently lecturer in surgery at Imperial College London and surgeon registrar at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London. His historical and paleopathological work spans the era of Alexander the Great and the classical world epistemology and the earliest world literature from the Ancient Near East art and science in the renaissance focusing on the work of Leonardo da Vinci. As an Egyptologist he has offered the first pathological analysis of the Great Sphinx and his analysis of the death of Tutankhamun was featured in documentaries on the BBC and the Smithsonian Channel. He is the founding president of the Institute of Polymaths.