Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/852

Rh 822 MORGAGNI study philosophy and medicine, and he graduated with much eclat as doctor in both faculties three years later (1701). He acted as prosector to Valsalva (one of the distinguished pupils of Malpighi), who held the office of &quot; demonstrator anatomicus &quot; in the Bologna school. He assisted Valsalva more particularly in preparing his cele brated work on the Anatomy and Diseases of the Ear, which came out in 1704. Many years after (1740), Morgagni edited a collected edition of Valsalva s writings, with im portant additions to the treatise on the ear, and with a memoir of the author. When Valsalva was transferred to Parma Morgagni succeeded to his anatomical demon stratorship. At this period he enjoyed a high repute in Bologna ; he was made president of the Academia Inquietorum when in his twenty -fourth year, and he is said to have signalized his tenure of the presiden tial chair by discouraging abstract speculations, and by setting the fashion towards exact anatomical observa tion and reasoning. He published the substance of his communications to the Academy in 1706 under the title of Adversaria Anatomica, the first of a series by which he became favourably known throughout Europe as an accurate anatomist ; the book included &quot; Observations on the Larynx, the Lachrymal Apparatus, and the Palvic Organs in the Female.&quot; After a time he gave up his post at Bologna, and occupied himself for the next two or three years at Padua and Venice with anatomical studies (of fishes at the latter city), as well as with chemistry and pharmacy, and with reading in the libraries. He then settled in practice in his native town, and soon attracted a large amount of business ; there was hardly a case of much difficulty about which he was not consulted even by the older physicians, &quot; adeo erat in observando attentus, in praedicendo cautus, in curando felix.&quot; Such at least is the contemporary eulogy. After less than three years of this career, which he found fatiguing, he sought an opportunity of returning to more academical work. At Padua he had a friend in the elder Guglielmini, pro fessor of medicine, but better known as a writer on physics and mathematics, whose works he afterwards edited (1719) with a biography. Guglielmini desired to see him settled as a teacher at Padua, and the unexpected death of Guglielmini himself made the project feasible, Vallisnieri being transferred to the vacant chair and Morgagni suc ceeding to the chair of theoretical medicine. He came to Padua in the spring of 1712, being then in his thirty-first year, and he taught medicine there with the most brilliant success until his death sixty years later (6th December 1771). When he had been three years in Padua an oppor tunity occurred for his promotion (by the Venetian senate) to the chair of anatomy, in which he became the successor of an illustrious line of scholars, including Vesalius, Fallopius, Fabricius, Gasserius, and Spigelius, and in which he enjoyed a stipend that was increased from time to time by vote of the senate until it reached twelve hundred gold ducats. Shortly after coming to Padua he married a lady of Forli, of noble parentage, who bore him three sons and twelve daughters ; of the daughters, four died in infancy, and the other eight took the veil as they grew up ; of the sons, one died in boyhood, one entered the Jesuit order, and the eldest settled at Forli, where he married and lived to the age of fifty-two, predeceasing his father by five years and leaving a family to his care. Morgagni enjoyed an unequalled popularity among all classes. He was of tall and dignified figure, with blonde hair and blue eyes, and with a frank and happy expression ; his manners were polished, and he was noted for the elegance of his Latin style. He lived in harmony with his colleagues, who are said not even to have envied him his unprecedentedly large stipend ; his house and lecture-theatre were frequented &quot; tanquam officina sapientise &quot; by students of all ages attracted from a.l parts of Europe ; he enjoyed the friend ship and favour of distinguished Venetian senators and of cardinals ; successive popes conferred honours upon him ; and on two occasions when a hostile army occupied the /Emilia his house was ordered to be treated with the same marked distinction that the great Emathian conqueror showed to the house of Pindar. Before he had been long in Padua the students of the German nation, of all the faculties there, elected him their patron, and he advised and assisted them in the purchase of a house to be a German library and club for all time. No person of any learning came to Padua without seeing and conversing with Morgagni, and no one ever left him without admiring equally his character and his teaching. One of his bio graphers and editors, the celebrated Tissot of Lausanne, observes that he had met with several Englishmen re turning from Italy who told with pleasure and gratitude &quot;quam humaniter illos exceperat, et quantum ex illius colloquiis, doctis, variis, jucundis profecerant.&quot; He was elected into the Imperial Caesareo-Leopoldina Academy in 1708 (originally located at Schweinfurth), and to a higher grade in 1732, into the Royal Society in 1724, into the Paris Academy of Sciences in 1731, the St Petersburg Academy in 1735, and the Berlin Academy in 1754. Among his more celebrated pupils were Scarpa (who died in 1832, connecting the school of Morgagni with the modern era), Cotunnius (Cotugno), and Caldani, the author of the magnificent atlas of anatomical plates published in 4 vols. at Venice in 1801-1814. Meanwhile he published on a variety of subjects. In his earlier years at Padua he brought out (1717-1719) five more series of the Adversaria Anatomica by which his reputation was first made ; but for more than twenty years after the last of these his strictly medical publications were few and casual (on gall-stones, varices of the vena cava, cases of stone, and several memoranda on medico-legal points drawn up at the request of the curia). Classical scholarship in those years occupied his pen more than anatomical observations ; and the reason of thie appears to have been that he spent the summer months in the country for the sake of his health, and occupied his leisure with literary studies. His writings in this class include letters to Lancisi on the manner of Cleopatra s death, commentaries on Celsus and Sammonicus, notes on Prosper Alpinus, Yarro, Vegetius, Columella, and Yitruvius, and antiquarian researches into the topography of the country round Ravenna and his own birthplace (Forum Livii). His edition of the works of Yalsalvn, published in 1740 (in 2 vols. 4to) with plates, occupied much of his time, being enriched with a life and a commentary, and with many additional observations of his own. It was not until 1761, when he was in his eightieth year, that he brought out the great work which, once for all, made pathological anatomy a science, and diverted the course of medicine into new channels of exactness or precision the De Scdibus ct Causis Morborum per Anatomcm indagatis. He died on 6th December 1771. During the preceding ten years the De Scdibus, notwithstanding its bulk, was reprinted several times (thrice in four years) in its original Latin, and was translated into French (1765), English (1769, 3 vols. 4to), and German (1771). Some account of this remarkable work remains now to be given. The only special treatise on pathological anatomy previous to that of Morgagni was the work of Theophile Bonct of Neuchatel, Sepul- chrctum : sivc Anatomia practica ex cadarcribus morbo dcnatis, first published (Geneva, 2 vols. folio) in 1679, three years before Morgagni was born ; it was republished at Geneva (3 vols. folio) in 1700, and again at Leyden in 1709. Although the normal anatomy of the body had been comprehensively, and in some parts exhaustively written by Vesalius and Fallopius, it had not occurred to any one to examine and describe systematically the anatomy of diseased organs and parts. Harvey, a century after Vesalius, naively re marks that there is more to be learned from the dissection of one person who had died of consumption or other chronic malady than from the bodies of ten persons who had been hanged. Glisson indeed (1597-1677) shows, in a passage quoted by Bonet in the preface to the Scpulchrctum, that he was familiar with the idea, at least, of systematically comparing the state of the organs in a series of cadavera, and of noting those conditions which invariably accompanied a given set of symptoms. The work of Bonet was, however, the first attempt at a system of morbid anatomy, and, although it dwelt mostly upon curiosities and monstrosities, it