Giovanni Filippo Ingrassia

Giovanni Filippo Ingrassia was an Italian physician of the sixteenth century, a student of Falloppio, Manardo and Vesalius, professor at the University of Naples and Protomedicus of Sicily, and a major figure in the history of medicine and human anatomy. Born in Regalbuto in Sicily, he studied at Padua from 1532 to 1537. In 1544 he became professor of anatomy and medicine at Naples, where he conducted dissection studies. He gave the first distinct account of the sphenoid and ethmoid bones and in 1546 first described the stapes, the third ear bone. His work De tumoribus praeter naturam of 1553 contains what is probably the first description of scarlet fever.