Theorizing epigenesis in a time of preexistence: From the end of the seventeenth century to the 1720s.

According to a classic periodization in the history of science, biological thought as it emerged in France from the last decades of the seventeenth century to the 1740s was strongly committed to the doctrine of the preexistence of germs. Nicolas Malebranche's role in disseminating this paradigm, particularly in the milieu of the Académie Royale des Sciences during the years when Bernard Le Bouyer de Fontenelle was its secretary, has been studied in detail, especially by Jacques Roger. However, much less has been said about the authors who argued against this doctrine prior to the appearance of the relevant pieces by Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, and Denis Diderot.

[Coleman lipofilling: experience of an Italian group and review of the literature].

Although the first operation of reconstructive breast surgery dates back to the end of the nineteenth century, it was only in the last decade of the twentieth century that lipofilling became widely adopted in the management of diseases of the breast. The Coleman technique involves taking a sample of fat from the regions of the body where it is largely present (abdomen, trochanter region, groin, knee), followed by centrifugation and the grafting of the fat cells thus purified. In 1987 the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery banned the diffusion of this procedure because it was considered of little benefit for both aesthetic and oncological purposes.