Pediatric hematology and oncology in Italy: half a century of progress, an ongoing search for improvement

Pediatric hematology and oncology has been a well-organized specialty throughout Italy only since 1974. However, it seemed interesting and fitting to review some of the milestones lying at the base of the development of this field of medicine: the first Italian Children's Hospital created in Florence in the fifteenth century; the first textbook of pediatrics, De Morbis Puerorum, by G. Mercuriale of Bologna; the first hematologic breakthroughs in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries; and the paramount achievements in pediatric hematology and oncology over the last 50 years.