Dermo quiz: the illness and death of Anna Maria Lodovica de' Medici, Palatine Electress (1667-1743).

ABSTRACT

According to the unpublished documents, preserved in the Archives, the authors provide a possible explanation of the disease of the Anna Maria Lodovica de' Medici, the last descendent of the famous Florentine dynasty, suggesting that she could not have suffered from breast cancer, as it was claimed, but that she could have contracted syphilis. The opportunity to exhume her corpse in the frame of the Medici Project will supply evidence for this interpretation.