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How did Giovanni Battista Morgagni change ideas about the causes of disease?

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Rudolf Virchow German pathologist and statesman Rudolf Virchow was one of the most prominent physicians of the 19th century.

Giovanni Battista Morgagni fundamentally shifted medical understanding by challenging the long-standing "humoral pathology" theory, which attributed disease to an imbalance of the body's four humors (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile).1

In his landmark 1761 work, De Sedibus et Causis Morborum per Anatomen Indagatis, Morgagni demonstrated that diseases were actually caused by specific lesions within the body's organs. By documenting 640 dissections, he established the necessity of basing diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment on a comprehensive knowledge of anatomical conditions. This work marked him as a founder of morbid anatomy, as he was the first to systematically locate diseases within individual organs.213

While Morgagni did not disconnect pathological anatomy from clinical practice, his focus on anatomical findings provided a scientific foundation that moved medicine away from ancient humoral theories and toward a more empirical, organ-based understanding of disease.21