Cancer in two Renaissance families

We read with great interest the letter published by Raffaele Gaeta and colleagues1 describing a supposed concentration of cancer cases in the Renaissance court of Naples. However, this short report lacks important physiopathological and bibliographical data. First, more than five cases of malignant tumours have been published in the paleopathological literature.2 The authors focused exclusively on soft-tissue tumours in mummified human remains1, 3 without mentioning bone cancer cases,2 therefore giving a biased view of cancer frequencies in past populations.