Antonio Benivieni was a Florentine physician

Physician

A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...

 who pioneered the use of the autopsy

Autopsy

An autopsy—also known as a post-mortem examination, necropsy , autopsia cadaverum, or obduction—is a highly specialized surgical procedure that consists of a thorough examination of a corpse to determine the cause and manner of death and to evaluate any disease or injury that may be present...

, a postmortum dissection of a deceased patient's body used to understand the cause of death. Benivieni published a treatise entitled De Abditis Morborum Causis ("The Hidden Causes of Disease") which is now considered one of the first works in the science of Pathology

Pathology

Pathology is the precise study and diagnosis of disease. The word pathology is from Ancient Greek , pathos, "feeling, suffering"; and , -logia, "the study of". Pathologization, to pathologize, refers to the process of defining a condition or behavior as pathological, e.g. pathological gambling....

. Some of the protocols developed by Benivieni are similar to those used in autopsies to this day, and he has been referred to as the "father of pathologic anatomy."