Matthew Baillie: pioneer of systematic pathology

This year is the 250th anniversary of the birth of Matthew Baillie, whose textbook Morbid Anatomy of the Human Body, published in 1793, and its accompanying atlas, published 6 years later, constituted the first textbook which dealt exclusively with system-based pathology. This adopted a new and convenient method of describing pathology according to the organs involved rather than according to symptoms, as Giovanni Morgagni (1682-1771) of Padua had adopted in his De Sedibus et Causis Morborum (On the sites and causes of disease). This, published in 1760, was rightly regarded as the first textbook which correlated symptoms in life with the appearance of the viscera at autopsy.