Sprengel well remarks that "it is hard to say whether one should admire most his rare dexterity and quickness in dissection, his unimpeachable love of truth and justice in his estimation of the work of others, his extensive scholarship and rich classical style or his downright common sense and manly speech." Upon this solid foundation the morbid anatomy of modern clinical medicine was built.

Many of Morgagni's contemporaries did not fully appreciate the change that was in progress, and the value of the new method of correlating the clinical symptoms and the morbid appearances.
After all, it was only the extension of the Hippocratic method of careful observation--the study of facts from which reasonable conclusions could be drawn.

In every generation there had been men of this type--I dare say many more than we realize--men of the Benivieni character, thoroughly practical, clear-headed physicians.

A model of this sort arose in England in the middle of the seventeenth century, Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689), who took men back to Hippocrates, just as Harvey had led them back to Galen.

Sydenham broke with authority and went to nature.