Kidney diseases in the major work of Giovanni Battista Morgagni

The rich heritage of anatomical texts during Renaissance and thereafter: a lead up to Henry Gray's masterpiece

The practice of modern human anatomy was started by Vesalius in sixteenth century Europe during the Renaissance. His exploits are documented in his legendary anatomical text De humani corporis fabrica. Remarkable success of De humani encouraged noted anatomists to publish their own texts over the years. Such a cascading effect started an ongoing process of refining the text based presentation of anatomical details that eventually led to the emanation of Gray's Anatomy, the masterpiece from Henry Gray. In this review article we have tried to revisit the journey from De humani to Gray's Anatomy and have also highlighted on other anatomical texts that form important landmarks in this journey. The article attempts to focus on the rectification of Galenic errors, description of new discoveries in human anatomy, introduction of the concept of clinical anatomy, emergence of surgical anatomy and the advent of sectional anatomy. The article also put emphasis on the efforts to make anatomical illustrations used in texts more scientific and in tune with the printed matter. We noted with interest that luminary anatomists over the years have contributed in their own individual manner towards the development of text based anatomy and from cumulative perspective their visionary efforts have shaped the outlook of anatomical texts in present times.

Giovanni Battista Morgagni (1682-1771): father of pathologic anatomy and pioneer of modern medicine

Giovanni Battista Morgagni (1682-1771) was an Italian anatomist who introduced the anatomo-clinical concept in medicine and established anatomy as the instrument to identify the seat and etiology of any disease. He was professor of anatomy at the prestigious University of Padua for more than 50 years. His first documented text in anatomy, Adversaria Anatomica was published in three volumes between 1706 and 1719. His accurate anatomical descriptions of human organs enhanced his reputation as the most famous anatomist of Europe during that period. Morgagni published the most important work of his life, the masterpiece in pathologic anatomy, De Sedibus, in 1761. The text is based on his pathologic observations from about 700 autopsy dissections of patients whom he had treated during their lifetime. De Sedibus provides the reader with a precise correlation between the anatomo-pathologic findings at post-mortem and the clinical symptoms of a disease observed during a lifetime. Morgagni's ability to integrate and synthesize information set him apart from his contemporaries, and his anatomo-clinical method was a major breakthrough in the history of medicine as it helped physicians to diagnose a disease, analyse the prognosis of that disease and prepare a management protocol for the same. His achievements led to the emergence of pathologic anatomy as an exact science and with him began modern medicine.

The Scientific Revolution--The Kidney and Nephrology in and about the Seventeenth Century (Part 1)

In the history of the evolution of the medical sciences, it is in the 17th century that the conscious, deliberate, and systematic study of the workings of the human body began. It was a product of the radical changing attitudes of this insurgent century when mathematical reasoning and mechanistic philosophy replaced the teleological outlook of earlier times. It was then that meticulous observation, reproducible quantification, experimental validation, and mathematical exactitude in the quest for truths launched the Scientific Revolution. The effect on medicine was a transformative change from a descriptive to an explanatory body of knowledge during the course of which rigorous anatomical dissections were used for the mechanical explanation of organ function, when morbid changes observed at postmortem began to be related to clinical features of disease, and when the secretive analytical methods of alchemy began to be refined for the study of chemical changes in living matter. Essentially what began with meticulous observations of anatomical features begat physiology and laid the foundations of pathology and chemistry. As a result, studies of organ structure, function, and changes in disease in general, and of the kidney in particular, were clarified and progressed at a rate never achieved theretofore.