When a Master of Medicine leaves us, we all feel a bit more alone!
Robert with a great sense of respect for the others, with great dignity and with simplicity told us many things though his life, as outcome of his great personal clinical experience. It was a great clinician, but also a great man! I always remember when in his department in Cognac Jay of Paris, facing on fundamental issues of modern Lymphology, explained to me his way of seeing the therapeutic aspects about Lymphedemas: as good Parisian he compared the new (for the time) entrance to the Louvre to the three types of treatment (I usually tell this story in some congress speeches!). He told me: do you know the three pyramids? The two small ones on the side, you can compare to drug therapy and to surgery! Complex Physical Therapy can, conversely, be compared to the central pyramid, the high, the real entrance to the Museum!
He has held many positions in scientific societies: in French Society of Lymphology, in the International Society of Lymphology, in our European Society; but especially delighted us with wonderful and masterful Lectures in many international scientific contexts. You couldn’t end up to listen him, because he sent a lot of experience over the years with the clinical observation and with the refinement of imaging techniques due to his continue propensity to research and refinement of diagnostic-therapeutic protocols. All with rigor. I still remember in one of the latest circumstances in which we saw him with his determination and his rigor moderating a session of ISL Congress (I guess it was in Sydney), when he interrupted the presentation of a colleague a bit ‘too’ empirical ‘ (who wanted to show how the endogenous fluids were moving their body simply by bouncing on a trampoline) with this expression: “I stop you! This is a scientific congress and you can not submit stories to people who have travelled for hours to listen relations appropriate to the context!”
The state of your health didn’t allow you to participate to the ISL XXIV Congress of Rome in 2013; but we duly put you among the prestigious members of the Honorary Committee.
We’ll miss you Robert! You’ll Miss to many your patients but also to most young and old lymphologists around the World, who have learned so much from you in science, humility and humanity.
Sandro Michelini
