Antonio Scarpa

Antonio Scarpa (1752 to 1832) was an Italian anatomist and professor, born to a poor family at Lorenzaga in the Veneto and taught by a priest uncle until he entered the University of Padua at fifteen. He studied under Giovanni Battista Morgagni, took his medical doctorate in 1770, became professor at Modena in 1772, and from 1783 held the chair of anatomy at Pavia, where Emperor Joseph II had a new anatomical theatre built for his popular lectures. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1791 for observations on the nerves, the ear and the organ of smell. His books covered the inner ear, the nerves of the heart, bone structure, aneurysm, hernia and the diseases of the eye; the last was the first Italian ophthalmology text and earned him the title father of Italian ophthalmology. Several structures still carry his name, among them Scarpa's fascia and Scarpa's triangle. He died at Pavia in 1832.