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It was common practice between the 16th and the 18th c. to submit a clinical case to a physician whose renown and prestige were generally acknowledged even outside academic circles. Patients could normally gain access to Antonio Vallisneri, who was then a famous physician, through their own physician. Vallisneri was regularly engaged in writing consultations and sending them by post, an activity which gave way to a peculiar kind of writing both in style and language level. The patient and his illness are the object of minute descriptions in order to secure an effective therapy. One of the best therapies, nevertheless, seems to be the written communication itself, written by the physician for the patient, which possibly reassured the patient that the best possible therapeutic measures were being taken in order help to retrieve his or her health.

S. Filippo Neri (1515-1595), founder of the Congregazione dell'Oratorio in Rome, was a longly debated clinic case for his various pathologies. Eminent scientists, like B. Eustachio and A. Cesalpino, treated him and drew up clinical reports, which were inserted in the Canonization Process and also published as scientific works, and which give useful informations about the history of medicine in the second half of the 16th century. Those reports relate, among others, about many diseases like frequent heart palpitation, shaking tremors heat flame and bronchitic fever episodes, that since hte age of thirty affected the saint. Autopsy revealed cardiac hypertrophia and pulmonary artery dilatation over twice the normal diameter. G. M. Lancisi was the first who formulated the hypothesis of an artery aneurysm, which, according to the present knowledge, can be produced by a post-stenotic dilatation of the pulmonary valve and/or pulmonary hypertension. Tremors and flames can be attributed to hyperthyroidism. Doctors who treated S. Filippo Neri and who shoved to be aware of his psychology, considered his pathology due to supernatural causes. Their conclusions can be understood basing on the medical way of thinking of that age, which was still linked to ancient medicine and limited by the biological and medical knowledge of the time.