In 1675, the scholar and physician Giovanni Battista Capponi (1620-1675) died at his home in Bologna after having suffered from stones, podagra and phthisis. In his will he requested that his body be transported to the church of the Madonna di Galliera, where it was to be dissected and his heart kept in an urn, and then to another church to be buried.1 In his cadaver two excrescences were found, one in the right ventricle of the heart and the other in the pulmonary artery. These findings were described by Marcello Malpighi (1628-1694), who had been Capponi’s friend and colleague, in a notebook where he reported several post-mortems dating from 1666 to 1692. This notebook, which includes almost forty reports of dissections performed by Malpighi and several other Bolognese anatomists and physicians on the cadavers of patients, testifies to the intensive and collaborative practice of post-mortem observation which took place in this city in the latter part of the seventeenth century.

The Problems of Anatomia Practica and How to Solve Them: Pathological Dissection Around 1700

Marco Bresadola
2018

Abstract

In 1675, the scholar and physician Giovanni Battista Capponi (1620-1675) died at his home in Bologna after having suffered from stones, podagra and phthisis. In his will he requested that his body be transported to the church of the Madonna di Galliera, where it was to be dissected and his heart kept in an urn, and then to another church to be buried.1 In his cadaver two excrescences were found, one in the right ventricle of the heart and the other in the pulmonary artery. These findings were described by Marcello Malpighi (1628-1694), who had been Capponi’s friend and colleague, in a notebook where he reported several post-mortems dating from 1666 to 1692. This notebook, which includes almost forty reports of dissections performed by Malpighi and several other Bolognese anatomists and physicians on the cadavers of patients, testifies to the intensive and collaborative practice of post-mortem observation which took place in this city in the latter part of the seventeenth century.
2018
978-1-4724-6381-4
Marcello Malpighi, Anton Maria Valsalva, Ippolito Francesco Albertini, mechanicism, origins of the clinic, anatomical evidence
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11392/2381981
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