Guido Banti

Guido Banti (8 June 1852 – 8 January 1925) was an Italian physician and pathologist. He also performed innovative studies on the heart, infectious diseases and bacteriology, splenomegaly, nephrology, lung disease, leukaemia and motor aphasia. He gave his name to Banti’s disease.

Banti was born in Montebichieri in Tuscany. His father was a physician. He studied medicine at the University of Pisa and later the Medical School in Florence where he graduated in 1877. He was appointed to an assistant’s position at the local Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova and concurrently, as an assistant at the Laboratory of Pathological Anatomy. The ability to observe patients in bed and then carry out post mortem examination was to prove fundamental in parts of his work.

Working under the guidance of Celso Pellizzari by 1882 he was chief of medical services. In 1895, after a 5-year spell in a temporary post, he was appointed Ordinary Professor of Pathological Anatomy in the medical school in Florence. He remained in this post for 29 years until his retirement and death a year later in 1925.

Banti’s lifetime’s work ranged across several specialties. He published the first textbook in Italy on the techniques of bacteriology; Manuale di Tecnica Batteriologica, (Florence, 1885).

In 1886 he undertook a study of heart enlargement, and at the same time as an anatomist he studied the causes of aphasia, confuting the contemporary theory of Pierre Marie with a publication A proposito de recenti sulle afasie (Florence, 1907), followed in 1898 by a study of hyperplastic gastritis. He spent time studying cancer cells in 1890–93. 1894 he published a study of typhoid fever, Le setticemie tifiche (Florence). In 1895 he wrote about endocarditis and nephritis, Endocarditis e nefriti. (Florence) describing various forms of endocarditis and atherosclerosis of the kidney.

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