Giovanni Battista Morgagni

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Giovanni Battista Morgagni, portrait from De sedibus et causis morborum (1761)

Giovanni Battista Morgagni [ d͡ʒoˈvanːi baˈtːista mɔrˈgaɲi ] (also Giambattista Morgagni and Joannes Baptista Morgagnus ; *  February 25, 1682 in Forlì ; † December 5, 1771 in Padua ) was an Italian doctor , anatomist and with his idea that every health disorder is one The founder of modern pathology is to be assigned to anatomical changes .

Life

Morgagni was born in Forlì in Romagna and raised by his mother Maria Tornielli as a half-orphan after the early death of his father Fabrizio Morgagni. From 1698 to 1701 he studied in Bologna , where he received his doctorate in medicine and philosophy at the age of 19. While still a student, in 1699, he became a member of the Accademia degli Inquieti (Academy of the Restless), a society founded in 1691 to promote science, which Morgagni took over as chairman in 1704.

After completing his doctorate , he first worked for a few years at various hospitals in Bologna and as assistant to his teacher Antonio Maria Valsalva , for whom he also took on a year-long substitute professorship at the University of Bologna . During this time, he and Valsalva undertook anatomical studies, especially on the larynx . The results, which he published in 1706 as the first part of his Adversaria anatomica and dedicated to the Accademia degli Inquieti , made him known outside of Italy as well, and as early as 1708 earned him membership of the German Academy of Natural Scientists ( Leopoldina ).

Title page of the second expanded edition Adversaria Anatomica Omnia (1762)

From 1707 to 1709 he continued his studies in Venice . There he studied chemistry with Gian Girolamo Zannichelli (1662–1729) and, together with Gian Domenico Santorini (1681–1737), performed sections on human bodies. In June 1709 he returned to his hometown Forlì and worked there successfully as a general practitioner for two years. During this time he married Paola Verazeri, the daughter of a distinguished family from Forli. The union produced twelve daughters and three sons.

In September 1711 he was appointed to the University of Padua , initially to the second chair for theoretical medicine. He gave his inaugural lecture Nova institutionum medicarum idea there on March 17, 1712 . In September 1715 he then moved to the first chair in anatomy, the most important one at his faculty, which he held until his death. In 1717 he published the second part of the Adversaria Anatomica , in 1719 the six parts summarizing Adversaria Anatomica Omnia , which also appeared again in an expanded edition in 1723 and 1762. In addition to his teaching and research activities in Padua, he also pursued his diverse literary, archaeological and historical interests, which he had already trained in his youth, from which, among other things, the publication of letters on the transmission of the works of Aulus Cornelius Celsus and Serenus Samonicus emerged (1735) .

Title page of the first edition of De sedibus et causis morborum (1761)

In 1761, at the age of eighty, he published his main work, the five books De sedibus et causis morborum per anatomen indagatis ("On the seat and the causes of diseases, tracked down by anatomy"). The results of around 640 sections, some of which were carried out by Morgagni's students, are communicated in a total of 70 letters. According to Morgagnis's general approach, according to which symptoms of illness are no longer traced back to an imbalance of the four humors according to the theoretical approach of ancient humoral pathology , but to organic causes and to prove them empirically , the guiding interest of the work is the identification and localization of organic causes of illness. This starts with the post-mortem examination (examination after death) of disease-related anatomical changes of the organs and tries in this way to limit the organic "seat" of the disease. Morgagni's methods, which contribute significantly to the success of his empirical approach, include the systematic comparison of pathological findings on different corpses with a comparable medical history. The work, which was translated into French (1765), English (1769) and German (1771), had a lasting impact on medicine across Europe and is considered the founding document of scientific pathology.

Morgagni was in personal and correspondence with a large number of scientists and scholars of his time and was a member of a number of scientific societies , such as the aforementioned Accademia degli Inquieti and the Leopoldina, but also the Academies of Sciences in London (1724), Paris (1731), Saint Petersburg (1735) and Berlin (1754).

The UK Antarctic Place-Names Committee named the mountain known elsewhere as Mount Cabeza on the Antarctic Brabant Island after him on September 23, 1960 .

Services

According to Morgagni, a number of findings are named in medical terminology (see Pschyrembel , Clinical Dictionary, 258th edition 1988, p. 1040):

  • Morgagni-Adams-Stokes attack , also Adams-Stokes syndrome or MAS attack: attack-like disturbance of the cerebral blood flow as a result of acute cardiac arrhythmias.
  • Morgagni column , also Morgagni hole ( Trigonum sternocostale dextrum ): Right-sided split of the diaphragm between the sternum and the rib section.
  • Morgagni hernia : Diaphragmatic hernia (rupture) of the diaphragm that passes through the Morgagni cleft .
  • Morgagni hydatide , also Morgagni appendix: appendage at the upper pole of the testicle ( appendix testis ) as a relic of the embryonic development, or a similar appendage below the fallopian tube .
  • Morgagni cataract , also Cataracta Morgagniana: A special form of overripe cataract , in which the hard core of the eye lens sinks down into the liquefied lens cortex.
  • Morgagni syndrome , also Stewart-Morel-Morgagni syndrome or Morgagni triad, "diabetes of bearded women": a combination of obesity , hirsutism and hyperostosis frontalis interna that occurs particularly in older women .
  • Morgagni ventricle , also Morgagni pocket ( ventriculus laryngis ): bilateral bulge of the larynx between the pocket cord and vocal cord .
  • Morgagni crypts and Morgagni columns , designation for the sinus anales and longitudinal folds (Columnae anales) in the zona columnalis of the anal canal, the anal glands (Glandulae anales) open into the former .

literature

De sedibus , 1765
  • Michael Kutzer: Morgagni, Giovanni Battista . In WU Eckart / C. Gradmann (Hrsg.): Doctors Lexicon: From antiquity to the present . 2. completely revised Edition Springer-Verlag, Berlin (inter alia) 2001, ISBN 3-540-67529-9 , pp. 223-224.
  • Wolfgang U. Eckart : History of medicine . 4th, revised. and supplementary edition Springer-Verlag, Berlin (inter alia) 2000, ISBN 3-540-67405-5 , pp. 232-233.
  • Klaus Beneke: Biographies and scientific résumés of colloid scientists whose life dates are related to 1996. Verlag Reinhard Knof, Nehmten 1999 (= contributions to the history of colloid sciences, 8; communications of the colloid society , 1999), ISBN 3-934413-01-3 , pp. 32–36; Revised electronic version from January 2004: PDF, 442 kB
  • Axel W. Bauer : Morgagni, Giovanni Battista. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 1007 f.
  • Fabio Zampieri, Alberto Zanatta, Gaetano Thiene: An etymological “autopsy” of Morgagni's title: De sedibus et causis morborum per anatomen indagatis (1761) . In: Human Pathology . tape 45 , no. 1 , 2014, ISSN  0046-8177 , p. 12-16 , doi : 10.1016 / j.humpath.2013.04.019 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Member entry by Giovanni Battista Morgagni at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on January 21, 2017.
  2. ↑ Joannes Baptista Morgagnus: Adversaria anatomica omnia. I – IV (in one volume, together with other works), Leiden (Johann Arnold Langerak) 1723.
  3. ^ Giovanni Battista Morgagni: De sedibus et causis morborum per anatomists indagatis . 1761 ( archive.org ).

Web links

Commons : Giovanni Battista Morgagni  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files
personal data
SURNAME Morgagni, Giovanni Battista
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Morgagni, Giambattista; Morgagnus, Joannes Baptista
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian doctor, anatomist and founder of modern pathology
DATE OF BIRTH February 25, 1682
PLACE OF BIRTH Forlì
DATE OF DEATH December 5, 1771
Place of death Padua