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MORGAGNI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA (1682-1771)

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Originally appearing in Volume V18, Page 833 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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MORGAGNI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA (1682-1771) , See also:Italian anatomist, was See also:born on the 25th of See also:February 1682 at Forl? 1 His parents were in comfortable circumstances, but not of the See also:nobility; it appears from his letters to G. M. Lancisi that Morgagni was ambitious of gaining See also:admission into that See also:rank, and it may I His statue was erected at Fort? in 1875, and the See also:town library preserves fourteen See also:manuscript volumes of his writings. be inferred that he succeeded from the fact that he is described on a memorial tablet at See also:Padua as " nobilis forolensis." At the See also:age of sixteen he went to See also:Bologna to study See also:philosophy and See also:medicine, and he graduated with much '~clat as See also:doctor in both faculties three years later (1701). He acted as prosector. to A. M. Valsalva (one of the distinguished pupils of See also:Malpighi), who held the See also:office of " demonstrator anatomicus " in the Bologna school, . and whom he assisted more particularly in preparing his celebrated See also:work on the See also:Anatomy and Diseases of the See also:Ear, published in 1704. Many years after (1.740) Morgagni edited a collected edition of Valsalva's writings, with important additions to the See also:treatise on the ear, and with a memoir of the author. When Valsalva was transferred to See also:Parma Morgagni succeeded to his anatomical demonstratorship. At this See also:period he enjoyed a high repute in Bologna; he was made See also:president of the Academia Inquietorum when in his twenty-See also:fourth See also:year, and he is said to have signalized his See also:tenure of the presidential See also:chair by discouraging abstract speculations, and by setting the See also:fashion towards exact anatomical observation and reasoning. He published the substance of his communications to the See also:Academy in 1706 under the See also:title of Adversaria anatomica, the first of a See also:series by which he became favourably known throughout See also:Europe as an accurate anatomist; the See also:book included " Observations on the Larynx, the Lachrymal Apparatus, and the Pelvic See also:Organs in the See also:Female." After a See also:time he gave up his See also:post at Bologna, and occupied himself for the next two or three years at Padua, where he had a friend in Domenico Guglielmini (1655-1.7,0), See also:professor of medicine, but better known as a writer on physics and See also:mathematics, whose See also:works he afterwards edited (1719) with a See also:biography.

Guglielmini desired to see him settled as a teacher at Padua, and the unexpected See also:

death of Guglielmini himself made the project feasible, See also:Antonio Vallisneri (1661–1730) being transferred to the vacant chair, and Morgagni succeeding to the chair of theoretical medicine, He came to Padua in the See also:spring of 1712, being then in his See also:thirty-first year, and he taught medicine there with the most brilliant success until his death on the 6th of See also:December 1771. When he had been three years in Padua an opportunity occurred for his promotion (by the Venetian See also:senate) to the chair of anatomy, in which he became. the successor of an illustrious See also:line of scholars, including A. Vesalius, G. See also:Fallopius, H. See also:Fabricius, Gasserius, and A. Spigelius, and in which he enjoyed a See also:stipend that was increased from time to time by See also:vote of the senate until it reached twelve See also:hundred See also:gold ducats. Shortly after coming to Padua he married a See also:lady of Foril, of See also:noble. parentage, who See also:bore him three sons and twelve daughters. Morgagni enjoyed an unequalled popularity among all classes. He was of tall and dignified figure, with blonde See also:hair and See also:blue eyes, and with a, See also:frank and happy expression; his See also:manners were polished, and he was noted for the elegance of his Latin See also:style. He lived, in See also:harmony with his colleagues, who are said not even to have envied him his unprecedentedly large stipend; his See also:house and lecture-See also:theatre were frequented "tanquam officina sapientiae" by students of all ages, attracted from all parts of Europe; he enjoyed the friendship and favour of distinguished Venetian senators and of cardinals; and successive popes conferred honours upon him. Before he had been See also:long in Padua the students of the See also:German nation, of all the faculties there, elected him their See also:patron, and he advised and assisted them in the See also:purchase of a house to be a German library and See also:club for all time. He was elected into the imperial Caesareo-Leopoldina Academy in 1708 (originally located at See also:Schweinfurth), and to a higher grade in 1732, into the Royal Society in 1724, into the See also:Paris Academy of Sciences in 1731, the : St See also:Petersburg Academy in 1735, and the See also:Berlin Academy in 1754.

Among his more celebrated pupils were Antonio Scarpa (who died in 1832, connecting the school of Morgagni with the See also:

modern era), Domenico Cotugno (1736-1822) and L. M. A. See also:Caldani (1725–1813), the author of the magnificent See also:atlas of anatomical plates published in 2 vols. at See also:Venice in 18o1-1814. In his earlier years at Padua Morgagni brought out (1717-1719) five more series of the Adversaria anatomica, by which his reputation v:-as first made: but for more than' twenty years after the last ofthese his strictly medical publications were few and casual (on See also:gall-stones, varices of the vena cava, cases of See also:stone, and several memoranda on medico-legal points, See also:drawn up at the See also:request of the See also:curia). Classical scholarship in those years occupied his See also:pen more than anatomical observation. It was not until 1761, when he was in his eightieth year, that he brought out the See also:great work which, once for all, made pathological anatomy a See also:science, and diverted the course of medicine into new channels of exactness or precision—the De Sedibus et causis morborum per anatornem indagatis, which during the succeeding ten years, notwithstanding its bulk, was reprinted several times (thrice infour years) in its See also:original Latin, and was translated into See also:French (1765), See also:English (1769, 3 vols. 4t0), and German (1771). Some See also:account of this remarkable work remains now to be given. The only See also:special treatise on pathological anatomy previous to that of Morgagni was the work of See also:Theophile Bonet of See also:Neuchatel, Sepulchretum: See also:save anatomia practica ex cadaveribus morbo denatis, first published (See also:Geneva, .2 vols. See also:folio) in 1679, three years before Morgagni was born; it was republished at Geneva (3 vols., folio) in 1700, and again at See also:Leyden in 1709. Although the normal anatomy of the See also:body had been comprehensively, and in some parts exhaustively, written by Vesalius and Fallopius, it had not occurred to any one to examine and describe systematically the' anatomy of diseased organs and parts. See also:Harvey, a See also:century after Vesalius, naively re-marks that there is more to be learned from the See also:dissection of one See also:person who had died of See also:consumption or other chronic malady than from the bodies of ten persons who had been hanged.

F. Glisson, indeed (1597-1677), shows, in a passage quoted by Bonet in the See also:

preface to the Sepulchretum, that he was See also:familiar with the See also:idea, at least, of systematically comparing the' See also:state of the organs in a series of cadavera, and of noting those conditions which invariably accompanied a given set of symptoms. The work of Bonet was, however, the first See also:attempt at a See also:system of morbid anatomy, and, although it dwelt mostly upon curiosities and monstrosities, ' it enjoyed' much repute in its See also:day; See also:Haller speaks of it as "an immortal work, which may in itself serve for a pathological library." Morgagni, in the preface to his own work, discusses the defects and merits of the Sepulchretum : it was largely a compilation of other men's cases, well and See also:ill authenticated; it was prolix, often inaccurate and misleading from See also:ignorance of the normal anatomy, and it was wanting in what would now be called See also:objective impartiality—a quality which was introduced as decisively into morbid anatomy by Morgagni as it had been introduced two centuries earlier into normal human anatomy by Vesalius. Morgagni has narrated the circumstances under which the De Sedibus took origin. Having finished his edition of Valsalva in 1740, he was taking a See also:holiday in the See also:country, spending much of his time in the See also:company of a See also:young friend who was curious in many branches of knowledge. The conversation turned upon the Sepulchretum of Bonet, and it was suggested to Morgagni by his See also:dilettante friend that he should put on See also:record his own observations.. It was agreed that letters on the anatomy of diseased, organs and parts should be written for the perusal of this favoured youth (whose name is not mentioned); and they were 'continued from time to time until they numbered seventy. Those seventy letters constitute the De sedibus et causis morborum, which was given to the See also:world as a systematic treatise in 2 vols., folio (Venice, 1761), twenty years after the task of epistolary, instruction was begun. The letters are arranged in five books, treating of the morbid conditions of the body a capite ad calcem, and together containing the records of some 640 dissections. Some of these are given at great length, and with a precision of state. ment and exhaustiveness of detail hardly surpassed in the so-called "protocols" of the German pathological institutes of the See also:present time; others, again, are fragments brought in to elucidate some question that had arisen. The symptoms during the course of the malady' and other antecedent circumstances are always prefixed with more or less fulness, and discussed from the point of view of the conditions found after death. Subjects in all ranks of See also:life, including several cardinals, figure in this remarkable See also:gallery of the dead, Many of the cases are taken from Morgagni's See also:early experiences at Bologna, and from the records of his teachers Valsalva and H.

F. Albertini not elsewhere published. They are selected and arranged with method and purpose, and they are often (and somewhat casually) made the occasion of a long excursus on See also:

general See also:pathology and See also:therapeutics. The range of Morgagni's scholarship, as evidenced by his references to early and contemporary literature, is astonishing. It has been contended that he was himself not See also:free from prolixity, the besetting See also:sin of the learned; and certainly the See also:form and arrangement of his treatise are such as to make it difficult to use in the present day, notwithstanding that it is well indexed in the original edition, in that of See also:Tissot (3 vols., 4to, Yverdun, 1779), and in more See also:recent See also:editions. It differs from modern See also:treatises in so far as the symptoms determine the See also:order and manner of presenting the anatomical facts. Although Morgagni was the first to understand and to demonstrate the See also:absolute See also:necessity of basing diagnosis, See also:prognosis and treatment on an exact and comprehensive knowledge of anatomical conditions, he made no attempt (like that of the See also:Vienna school sixty years later) to exalt pathological anatomy into a science disconnected from clinical medicine and remote from See also:practical needs. His orderliness of anatomical method (implying his skill with the scalpel), his precision, his exhaustiveness, and his freedom from See also:bias. are his essentially modern or scientific qualities; his scholarship and high See also:consideration for classical and See also:foreign work, his sense of practical ends (or his See also:common sense), and the breadth of his intellectual See also:horizon prove him to have lived before medical science had become largely technical or See also:mechanical. His treatise was the commencement of the era of steady, or cumulative progress in. pathology and in practical medicine. Symptoms from that, time ceased to be made up into more or less conventional See also:groups, each of which was a disease; on the other See also:hand, they began to be viewed as " the cry of the suffering organs," and it became possible to develop See also:Thomas See also:Sydenham's See also:grand conception of a natural See also:history of disease in a See also:catholic or scientific spirit. A biography of Morgagni by Mosca was published. at See also:Naples in 1768. His life may also be read in A.

Fabroni's Vitae illustr. Italor., and a convenient abridgment of Fabroni's memoir will be found prefixed to Tissot's edition of the De sedibus, &c. A collected edition of his works was published at Venice in 5 vols. folio, in 1765. (C.

End of Article: MORGAGNI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA (1682-1771)

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