OBITUARY Pineal
mythology and chronorisk:
The Swan Song of Brunetto TARQUINI (February 8, 1938 – December
10, 1998)
Franz Halberg,
Germaine Cornélissen, Othild Schwartzkopff,
Mario Cagnoni, Federico Perfetto & Roberto Tarquini
Brunetto Tarquini, head of Internal Medicine
at the University of Florence, Italy, died at the peak of a
productive career. A few days before his passing, his contributions
to the 6th National Congress of the Italian Society for Chronobiology
in Chianciano Terme—in the footsteps of the Roman poet
Horace and the emperor Augustus (Rastrelli 1999; Soren and Romer
1999)—exuded scholarship, which we try to convey herein;
on a trip after the meeting through his native countryside,
Brunetto exuded friendship, for those living and also for those
of quite a while ago.
Brunetto, who was born in Trequanda, near Siena, graduated in
medicine from the University of Florence in 1963. He then went
through the ranks, spending his entire professional career in
Florence. In an earlier generation, Harvey Cushing visited Florence
originally to enjoy Michelangelo’s David and other works
of art, but was pleased to encounter an outstanding medical
atmosphere. Albeit with a lag in phase, Brunetto Tarquini further
added greatly to the aura of Florentine medicine.
Here, Brunetto became professor of medical semeiotics and cardiology
in 1981, and chief of an internal medicine department in 1990,
a position he held until his untimely death. As director of
the Inter-University Center for Clinical Chronobiology and as
coordinator of a post-doctoral school in chronobiology, Brunetto
influenced many young Italian physicians. He became the leader
of a budding specialty of chronomedicine, coordinating an international
group. His focus included temporal aspects of vascular diseases
from womb-to-tomb as well as oncological risk factors. His research
thus ranged from neonatology over neuroendocrinology to geriatrics,
by studies on the pineal in particular, documenting the signature
of heliogeomagnetic master switches for circulating human melatonin.
