Giovanni Battista Morgagni

Morgagni, Giovanni Battista (1682–1771), anatomist, the first person to make the study of diseases a science. An anatomy professor at the University of Padua, Morgagni believed that the key to diagnosing and treating diseases lay in knowledge of the body and how it functions. He studied hundreds of corpses to find the causes of their deaths. His findings are recorded in On the Seats and Causes of Diseases (1761).

See also: Anatomy; Pathology.