Giovanni Battista Morgagni (1682-1771)
Italian physician Giovanni Battista Morgagni pioneered pathological anatomy. He kept a medical diary of his studies and observations as a student at the University of Bologna. He later expanded this method into compilations of his cases.
Morgagni became Professor of Anatomy at the famous University of Padua. He conducted extensive diagnostic sessions with patients as well as postmortem examinations of over 700 cases. He wanted to discover the underlying anatomical lesions of the diseases the patient had suffered from. His 1761 book De sedibus et causis morborum per anatomen indagatis (The Seats and Causes of Diseases Investigated by Anatomy, 1761) contained the results of 60 years of scientific labour. In it Morgagni argued it was important to establish the correlation between these lesions and patients’ symptoms to understand the causes of disease.
Related Themes and Topics
Bibliography
M Nicolson, ‘Giovanni Battista Morgagni and eighteenth-century physical examination’, in C Lawrence (ed.), Medical Theory, Surgical Practice: Studies in the History of Surgery (London: Routledge, 1992), pp 101-34
G Ongaro, ‘Morgagni, Giovanni Battista’, in W F Bynum and H Bynum (eds), Dictionary of Medical Biography, Vol. 4 (Westport and London: Greenwood Press, 2007), pp 897-900
Glossary:
Pathology
The branch of medicine concerned with disease, especially its structure and effects on the body.
Post Mortem
A medical procedure that consists of an examination to discover the cause and manner of a death.