Avicenna
Avicenna was born in Afshana, a village near Bukhara (in present-day Uzbekistan), the capital of the Samanids, a Persian dynasty in Central Asia and Greater Khorasan. His mother, named Sitāra, was from Bukhara; his father, Abdullāh, was a respected Ismaili scholar from Balkh, an important town of the Samanid Empire, in what is today Balkh Province, Afghanistan. His father worked in the government of Samanid in the village Kharmasain, a Sunni regional power. After five years, his younger brother, Mahmoud, was born. Avicenna first began to learn the Quran and literature in such a way that when he was ten years old he had essentially learned all of them.
Vincenzo Lanza
Vincenzo Lanza, or Vincenzio (as he preferred to be called) was born in Foggia from a humble couple coming form Roseto Valfortore working as service personnel in Mr Saggese's estates. He spent the first years of his life in the province of Foggia, attending the Seminary of Ariano until he was 16, when he moved to Naples to study medicine. Very important for him was the figure of Domenico Cotugno, holder of the Chair of Protomedicato of the Reign (a sort of general management of Public Healthcare), even if he was also student of lots of important physicians of the time at the Ospedale degli Incurabili.