Giovanni Cosimo Bonomo

Giovanni Cosimo Bonomo (30 November 1666 – 13 January 1696) was an Italian physician, known for discovering the itch mite as the cause of the skin disease scabies. He described and drew them after observing their presence with the aid of a microscope in the fluid expressed from lesions of infected patients. By contradicting contemporary medical opinion and the papal aristocracy, he was harshly criticized and had a hard time finding a job. Eventually he became a personal physician for the German Electress Palatine Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici.