Giovanni Battista Morgagni

Giovanni Battista Morgagni (1682 to 1771) was an Italian anatomist, born in Forli, who is generally regarded as the father of modern anatomical pathology. He studied medicine at Bologna under pupils of Malpighi, above all Antonio Maria Valsalva, and from 1712 taught at the University of Padua, where he held the chair of anatomy for 56 years and taught thousands of students from many countries. His great work On the Seats and Causes of Disease, published at Venice in 1761 when he was in his eightieth year, established that most diseases arise locally in specific organs and tissues rather than being dispersed through the body, and it made pathological anatomy a science.