The first day that I arrived at the Institute of Internal Medicine at Milan Polyclinic, to start my fifth year as a student at the Faculty of Medicine, I saw a green plant in front of the entrance to the ward. Written on a piece of paper hanging on the plant were the words: “I am a plant, not an ashtray: respect me” followed by an illegible signature. Passing the plant, I entered the ward and saw a Professor of Medicine who was vigorously reprimanding a student who had not carried out her duties satisfactorily.
These were the first two good acts by Prof. Gemino Fiorelli that I saw: the students stopped stubbing out their cigarettes in the plant pot, leaving the plant to flourish, and that young woman who, frankly, was never going to be a good doctor, stopped studying medicine.
I then started to follow Fiorelli as Professor of Medicine, and he followed me in my training through medicine and haematology. I learnt to know him and his whole medical doctrine, his irrepressible enthusiasm for knowledge and his passionate desire to experiment always.
I don’t believe there is anyone else in the Italian academic world who has created as many research laboratories in university basements as Gemino Fiorelli: he established laboratories in the institutes in which he worked in Rome, Cagliari, Monza and Milan, this last university being where he finally remained as Professor Emeritus. There was no table or chair that others had discarded that Gemino did not try to restore and no instrument out of use that he did not try to repair in order to create his laboratories.
However, I also had the occasion to see his great humanity, his secular interest in social issues, his equilibrium and privacy which, collectively, I believe can be defined as a practical wisdom rooted in his land of origin: he was born in the Marche in a place where the beautiful, lush countryside recalls the noble concreteness of the agricultural worker.
Gemino Fiorelli published work on haematology, enzymology and, in general, on all congenital and acquired disorders of the red blood cell in all the most illustrious, international scientific journals. His scientific prestige, his attention to teaching, together with his great humanity, sometimes exuberant, and his natural sympathy, made him well-known in national and international scientific circles and attracted a group of students around him, but also made him popular among the non-medical staff in the hospitals in which he worked: it must be said that there were times when the staff were not sorry to see Fiorelli’s outbursts against his collaborators who did not meet his expectations.
His dedication to and passion for his work led Gemino to start a family life somewhat later than normal, but with Nica Cappellini he created a lovely family including his three children, Raffaele, Elisa and Giulia. Who thought that it would be difficult to build a relationship with children so very much younger were corrected by his son Raffaele who, reminding him, said: “but you, Dad, have never been 80 years old”.
I had the privilege of being his disciple and then his friend and, now that he has gone, of remembering him as a Maestro of science and also of life.