Théophile Bonet, who took his medical degree at Bologna and practised in his birth-place of Geneva, wrote 16 books on medical subjects, of which this is the most important. First published in Geneva, 1679, it is described in Norman as "the first systematic collection of pathological anatomy, compiled from nearly 2,000 years' worth of medical writings from the time of Hippocrates to the seventeenth century. Although it suffers from Bonet's refusal to draw general conclusions from specific examples, the work is valuable for its rediscovery and preservation of the forgotten work of others, and for having inspired Morgagni to compose his De sedibus et causis morborum."