Antonio Scarpa

Antonio Scarpa ( born May 19, 1752 Motta di Livenza, † October 31, 1832 in Bosnasco ) was an Italian anatomist.

The son of a boatman studied from 1766 at the University of Padua medicine while working as secretary to his teacher Giovanni Battista Morgagni ( 1692-1771 ). In 1770 he received his doctorate and in 1772 he was a professor at the Department of Anatomy and Surgery at the Modena. In the years 1781-1782 he undertook a study tour to France and England. In Paris he had made the personal acquaintance of Emperor Franz Joseph II of Austria, who was traveling incognito as Count of Falkenstein. Joseph II promoted him after that and by his support, he was was appointed in 1784 to the chair of anatomy at Pavia. With the financial support of the Emperor spent time studying at the universities of Prague, Dresden, Leipzig, Berlin, Helmstedt, Göttingen. From 1786, he also worked as a surgeon at the military hospital in Modena.

In 1804 he retired, but remained active as a physician and anatomist. In 1805 he became the first surgeon of Napoleon. In 1808 he was appointed foreign member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.

He described the nerve supply to the heart and the middle ear.

According to him, the Scarpa triangle ( femoral triangle ) and the Scarpa ganglion ( vestibular ganglion ) are named.

Writings

• Observationes de structura fenestrae rotundae (Modena 1772)
• Anatomicae Disquisitiones de auditu et olfactu (Pavia 1789)
• Tabulae neuro logicae ad illustrandam historiam cardiacorum nervorum (Pavia 1794)
• De anatome et pathologia ossium (Pavia 1827)
• Sulle degli occhi principali malattie (5th edition, Pavia 1816, 2 vols )