Giuseppe Flajani

Giuseppe Flajani received his first education in Ascoli and spent his student time in Rome, where he acquired a doctor’s degree of philosophy and medicine. He commenced his medical practice at the hospital San Spirito in Rom. His love for anatomy occasioned his founding of an anatomical cabinet in his native city of Sassia, near Rome, becoming its director. In 1772 he became Operateur en chef at the hospital San Spirito, and in 1775 he became personal physician to pope Pius VI. He left two sons, of which both studied medicine and one became his successor.

In 1802 Flajani published the first casuistic description of modern times of a patient with goiter and exophthalmos. Flajani was a competent surgeon, lithotomist and anatomist. His fame in ophthalmological surgery rests on his work on pupils and treatment of the inflammations of the lachrymal sac.

• Nuovo metodo di medicare alcune malattie spettanti alla chirurgia.
  Rome: Per Antonio Fulgoni, 1786.
  Contains important surgical observations. Of particular interest are Flajani's new methods of treating fractures of the knee-cap, fractures of the clavicle, and aneurysms of the poplieus. His later work concerning amputation of the joints is here first described.
• Collezioni di osservazioni e reflessioni di chirurgia.
  Rome, 1798-1803.
• Osservazioni pratiche sopra l’amputazione degli articoli ed invecchiate lussazioni del braccio, idrocefalo e patereccio.
  Rome, 1791.
  German translation in two volumes, Nürnberg, 1799.