The birth of Italian hematology and the foundation of Haematologica

Since antiquity and in every culture, blood has always been considered emblem of life, a source of nutrition, the seat of the vital spirit and soul. With the development of scientific thought this fluid has progressively been interpreted in a pathophysiological sense, as the basis of the mechanisms underlying the body’s metabolism in health and disease. A fundamental turning point came with the publication in 1628 of William Harvey’s scientific masterpiece Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus. The heterogeneity of body structures found then a common ground for functional unification: the blood