Morgagni, Giovanni Battista (1682–1771)

Italian anatomist who developed the view that disease was not an imbalance of the body's humours but a result of alterations in the organs. His work De sedibus et causis morborum per anatomen indagatis/On the Seats and Causes of Diseases as Investigated by Anatomy (1761) formed the basis of pathology.

Morgagni was born in Forli and studied at Bologna. As professor of anatomy at Padua, he carried out more than 400 autopsies. He did not use a microscope and he regarded each organ of the body as a composite of minute mechanisms.

Morgagni was the first to delineate syphilitic tumours of the brain and tuberculosis of the kidney. He grasped that where only one side of the body is stricken with paralysis, the lesion lies on the opposite side of the brain. His explorations of the female genitals, of the glands of the trachea, and of the male urethra also broke new ground.