ABSTRACT
Sudden death was ipso facto considered suspicious in all of the medico-legal literature. In truth, spiritual weapons were not the only resource the pope employed to halt the horror of sudden deaths. It was the first time that science had been called upon to confront a sanitary crises other than the plague or similar pestilential fevers. The papal physician Giovanni M. Lancisi was one of those who firmly believed that autopsies provided the experimental evidence on which medical knowledge must be based and to successfully dealing with public health emergencies. The first autopsy was performed on the victim that had caused the most sensation, Cardinal Sacripantis footman. Doctors were asked to give an expert opinion on the rising number of suspicious deaths; more precisely, their assignment was to investigate in depth the true causes of the rampant deaths by way of dissection of those who had died suddenly.
