Giovanni Battista Morgagni

Giovanni Battista Morgagni (February 25, 1682 – December 6, 1771) was an Italian anatomist, celebrated as the father of modern anatomical pathology. His parents were in comfortable circumstances, but not of the nobility; it appears from his letters to Giovanni Maria Lancisi that Morgagni was ambitious of gaining admission into that rank, and it may be inferred that he succeeded from the fact that he is described on a memorial tablet at Padua as nobilis forolensis. At the age of sixteen he went to Bologna to study philosophy and medicine, and he graduated with much éclat as doctor in both faculties three years later, in 1701. He acted as prosector to Antonio Maria Valsalva (one of the distinguished pupils of Malpighi), who held the...