Alberto Zanatta

University of Padova | UNIPD · Department of Cardiac, Thoracic and Vascular Sciences

A mummy of a young woman, who died due to tuberculous peritonitis and salpingitis, is conserved in the Pathological Anatomy Museum of the University of Padua. It was found at autopsy to have situs inversus of viscera with dextrocardia, apparently in the absence of other congenital defects. A 64-section scanner computed tomography (CT) on the specim...

Morgagni died on December 5, 1771, 89 years old, and was buried in Saint Maxim Church in Padua, where his wife and five of his 15 children, four daughters, and one son were already buried. In 1868 and 1900, the tomb was opened to identify Morgagni. Among the remains of several adult individuals, two skulls considered of very old persons were identi...

Following the birth of modern opera in Italy in 1600, the demand for soprano voices grew up and the prepuberal castration was carried out to preserve the young male voice into adult life. Among the castrati, Gaspare Pacchierotti was probably one of the most famous. The remains of Pacchierotti were exhumed for the first time in 2013, for a research...

Vincenzo Malacarne, professor of medicine, surgery, and obstetrics in Turin, Pavia, and Padua, Italy, represented a perfect example of an eighteenth century Bletterato^, combining interests in humanities, sciences, and politics, embodying the ideal of an encyclopedic and universal culture. He made important contributions in anatomy and surgery, ter...

Hieronymus Fabricius ab Acquapendente, famous anatomist of the medical school of Padua, Italy, marked a further step not only in the morphological studies, but also in anatomical illustration and physiology. His researches were inspired by the work of Aristotle which was focused on the understanding of biological “functions” in an anatomo-comparati...

Background Augusto Bonome (1857–1922), professor at the University of Padua until 1922, was involved in a study about a particular kind of pulmonary leprosy, being the first to testify the lepromatous alterations also in the deepest parts of the respiratory tract, even though the same Gerhard Hansen (1841–1912) had denied the possibility that lungs...

History of cardiology starts scientifically in 1628, when William Harvey (1578-1657) published his revolutionary book Extercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus, where he described "general" circulation , movements and functions of heart, heart valves, veins and arteries [1]. Consequently, all theories and practices of ancient...

Lodovico Brunetti (1813–1899), professor of pathological anatomy at the University of Padua and founder of the Museum of Pathological Anatomy, believed that anatomical preparations were essential for the practice and teaching of pathological anatomy. At his arrival in Padua in 1855, there were around 300 made by other professors of medicine, includ...

The University of Padua (Italy) preserves the skull of Santorio Santorio, father of the modern clinical experimental physiology. A recent study performed with modern anthropological methods and medical instruments (CT scan) revealed the presence of a lobular formation in the left temporal bone, with an irregular morphology, internal bone sequestrum...

Throughout history, medicine has been considered a superior and even sacred activity. The modern concept of medical malpractice was almost inconceivable for much of history as doctors enjoyed great immunity. This chapter examines the history of medical liability through two paradigmatic cases from Padua. The figure of Gabriele Zerbi, the author of...

Lodovico Brunetti (1813-1899) was the first professor of pathological anatomy at the University of Padua (1855) and the founder of the current Morgagni Museum of Pathological Anatomy. His interest in the renewal of rachiotomy techniques through the development of new instruments, still in use today, is well known. Brunetti was also famous for his s...

The Medical School of Padua (Italy) contributed profoundly to the study of teratology. Many famous physicians and professors of medicine, such as Liceti, Vallisneri, Morgagni, and Malacarne, have studied and investigated these anomalies to better understand the causes and to find a potential explanation, often preserving the specimens for future st...

Conjoined triplets are among the rarest of human malformations, as are asymmetric or parasitic conjoined twins. Based on a very modest corpus of recent literature, we applied the embryonic disk model of conjoined twinning to 10 previously reported cases involving asymmetric anatomical multiplications to determine whether they concerned conjoined tw...

The cremation has been documented since prehistoric times and it was a common funerary custom until the advent of Catholicism. Falling into disuse, during XVII–XVIII centuries there were new movements to bring it back according to modern criteria, mainly due to hygienic reasons and cemeteries overcrowding. This also led to the prototyping of new cr...

A unique specimen of argyria is preserved in the Morgagni Museum of Pathological Anatomy at the University of Padua (Italy). It is a stuffed head belonging to a man who decided to cure his syphilis by himself with the so-called infernal stone (silver nitrate) every day for years, thus developing argyria in the second half of the nineteenth century....

The fetal circulatory system bypasses the lungs and liver with three shunts. The foramen ovale allows the transfer of the blood from the right to the left atrium, and the ductus arteriosus permits the transfer of the blood from the pulmonary artery to the aorta. The ductus venosus is the continuation of the umbilical vein, allowing a large part of...

Leonardo Botallo (1530–c. 1587) is widely known for the eponymous “foramen Botalli” and “ductus Botalli”. The first, most commonly named “foramen ovale”, allows blood in the fetal heart to enter the left atrium from the right atrium. The second, named “ductus arteriosus”, consists of a blood vessel in the developing fetus connecting the trunk of th...

The history of the heart conduction system starts from Harvey, who first observed that right atrium is the origin of cardiac contraction. The subsequent series of discoveries of the origin and conduction of the electrical cardiac impulse followed, oddly enough, a reverse route, from peripheral ramification to the central pace-maker. Purkinje discov...

Tullio Terni (1888–1946) was a pioneer of neuroanatomy at the University of Padua. He gave milestone contributions in the knowledge of cardiac innervation with the discovery of the “Terni column”, a preganglionic autonomous nervous center. Due to “racial laws” introduced in Italy in 1938 by the Fascist government, he, being Jewish, was expelled fro...

Myocarditis was discovered as heart disease at autopsy with the use of microscope. In 1900, with the name of acute interstitial myocarditis, Carl Ludwig Alfred Fiedler first reported the history of a sudden cardiac heart failure, in the absence of coronary, valve, pericardial disease or classical specific infections with multiorgan involvement. He...

The anatomical museums are one of the most difficult categories of museums to deal with because the issues addressed and the stored materials are complex to communicate and often not suitable for all audiences. The history of medicine teaches us that the knowledge of our body is a fascinating topic that continues to be the subject of study and rese...

The third sentence from the beginning in our article.

An international research group, from the Brighton (UK), São Paulo (Brazil), and Durham (UK) universities, has recently developed a versatile method for sex definition in human bioarchaeological remains by analysing the sex-specific isoforms of amelogenin drawn from dental enamel.

The scientific museology began in Padua with the Museum of Natural Philosophy of Vallisneri. The purpose of this museum was to educate students and demonstrate what Vallisneri called “philosophical curiosity.” The Padua medical museology started with the anatomical museum of Morgagni in 1756. Morgagni planned the creation of a museum of anatomical...

It has been believed for a long time that the Paduan scholar Antonio Vallisneri (1661–1730) described the second historical case of the frontal sinus osteoma in 1733. By historico-medically reexamining this case, we conclude that the brain concretions he described were not a case of frontal sinus osteoma, while they appear to have been pathological...

Morgagni is considered the father of pathological anatomy. He died in 1771, 89 years old, and was buried in Saint Maxim church in Padua, where his wife and five of his 15 children were already buried. In 2011, an anthropological analysis confirmed that one of the skulls belonged to the oldest individuals among those found in Morgagni's tomb. A gene...

Girolamo Fabrici was a physician, anatomist, surgeon, and pupil and successor of Falloppia in the anatomy chair in Padua, where he built the anatomical theater. He is remembered for the exact description of the valves of the veins (without understanding the correct function). His embryological research is also important, and so the observations on...

In 2016, during the restoration of San Michele Palace in Vicenza, several human bones were found in two types of different burials: the first is a mass grave with more than 1100 bone elements arranged chaotically, while the second burial concerns an isolated hole with inside skulls with clear signs of craniectomy. Anthropological and historical...

[first paragraph of article]Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), professor of mathematics at the University of Padua from 1592 to 1610, was a pillar in the history of our University and a symbol of freedom for research and teaching, well stated in the university motto ‘‘Universa Universis Patavina Libertas’’ (Total freedom in Padua, open to all the world)....

The Medical Faculties of the University of Padua (Italy) and the University of Vienna (Austria) preserved two series of wax models, made by the Austrian Johann Nepomuk Hoffmayr at the beginning of the 19th century. These models were created in a period of evolution of both medical specialties and organ pathology, which brought morbid organs at the...

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The University of Padua has many legends about its cultural heritage. One of these concerns a collection of eight skulls still preserved in the Hall of Medicine at Bo Palace, near the old anatomy theatre built in 1545. It is said that some famous professors of the University donated their bodies to medical science, and the skulls were from these bo...

The most significant cardiovascular anatomo-clinical observations from Morgagni's masterpiece De sedibus et causis morborum per anatomen indagatis (1761) are herein reported, divided into the current taxonomy according to cardiac structure: A) aorta and pulmonary artery; B) pericardium, C) coronary arteries, D) myocardium, E) endocardium, F) congen...

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) complained of several disorders during his life, the most important of which were chronic arthritic pains and bilateral blindness. These symptoms might result from an immune rheumatic disease, namely reactive arthritis (urethritis, uveitis, arthritis), when Galileo started suffering with an episode of fever in June 1593....

The annular tendon is commonly named ‘annulus of Zinn’, from the German anatomist and botanist Johann Gottfried Zinn (1727–1759) who described this structure in his Descriptio anatomica oculi humani (Anatomical Description of the Human Eye, 1755). This structure, however, had been previously discovered not by Zinn, but by Antonio Maria Valsalva (16...

The so-called recorded emigrants were a new figure of migrant appeared during the Fascist period. They represented the clearest example of the mixture between political ideals and primary economic needs. This case study is about the recorded migration from Treviso to Argentina during the interwar period. Our aim is not only to reject the Fascist bi...

Nel 1998, durante dei lavori di restauro della cappella di San Floriano a Rio di Pusteria (Bz) sono stati trovati 30 m 3 di reperti ossei disposti caoticamente e non in connessione anatomica risalenti al periodo che va dal V al XVII secolo. Le indagini antropologiche si sono concentrate sull'analisi degli 8484 elementi femorali ritrovati, ricostrue...

In his quest to comprehend his existence, Man has long been exploring his outer world (macro-cosmos), as well as his inner world (micro-cosmos). In modern times, monmental advances in the fields of physics, chemistry, and other natural sciences have reflected on how we understand the anatomy and physiology of the human body and circulation. Yet, hu...

Pietro Gradenigo (1831-1904) represents one of the greatest eras of cultural and scientific activity in Italian ophthalmology. Padua's Vincenzo Pinali Medico-historical Library preserves 2 series of ophthalmologic wax models. Made by Pietro Gradenigo in 1884-1889, the first consists of 18 waxes and shows different eyes diseases, such as neoplasm an...

The fresco by Diego Rivera (1886 to 1957) on the history of cardiology was displayed at the "Instituto Nacional de Cardiología" of Mexico City at the time of inauguration on April 14, 1944. Some of the most important masters of the Padua Medical School were depicted, namely Vesalius, Harvey, and Morgagni. There is a vivid description of the anatomo...

For the Morgagnian anniversaries of 2011 to 2012, the University of Padua organized a wide research project, trying to understand Morgagni's contribution in his historical context and why he is still considered the father of a new way of thinking in medicine, based on anatomoclinical correlations. Calling his masterpiece De sedibus et causis morbor...

Il testo introduce il lettore ai concetti generali della paleopatologia e delle discipline ad essa correlate, dimostrando che si tratta di una materia che non si limita a studiare le malattie del passato, ma con un approccio olistico e attraverso i dati biologici, permette di poter ricostruire lo stile di vita delle popolazioni del passato. Le lezi...

Il progetto del Museo di Storia della Medicina e della Salute a Padova, che ci auguriamo sarà presto realizzato nella magnifica cornice dell'ex Ospedale di San Francesco restaurato a questo scopo, dovrà necessariamente identificarsi con la storia degli Ospedali del Padovano e della Scuola Medica Patavina. In questo senso sicuramente una copia digit...

Luigi Sacco (1769–1863) was the main protagonist of early vaccination campaign in Italy. He found a native source of vaccine lymph: with that, he personally vaccinated more than 500,000 people and furnished all Italy and some Middle East countries too. Starting from the pictures of his books, Sacco proposed to create wax models of “real” and “spuri...

Filippo Pacini is famous for his histological researches and in particular for the discovery of the small sensory organs known as Pacinian corpuscles in 1831, and the identification of the cholera bacillus in 1854. His researches touched a wide range of different medical and technical topics, from normal anatomy and physiology to pathology, from th...

This thesis wants to call the attention to the long route made by the collections of pathological anatomy from the second half of the 1700’s until the beginnings of the 1900’s and today. Padua has always been the world-wide centre of medicine. The necessity to preserve the anatomical preparations has kept pace with the prestige of the “Medical Scho...

This article reconstructs the figure of Lodovico Brunetti, the first Chair of Pathological Anatomy at the University of Padua, and Director of the homonymous Institute from 1869 to 1887. He was the inventor of a technique known as "tannization," for the conservation of animal tissue. In particular, we have reconstructed the episode related to a par...