These four individuals, despite their promising, euphonious names, did not write great operas. They were mere anatomists and worked on the area where the pancreas and gallbladder ducts meet to enter the duodenum.
The most senior of the group was the German Johann Georg Wirsung (1589–1643). While working in Padua in 1642 and dissecting an executed murderer, he noticed and described a canal extending from the tail of the pancreas to its head. This was the main pancreatic duct and has gone down in history as the duct of Wirsung. Its discoverer was unfortunately murdered in 1643 by a Belgian student named Giacomo Cambier in an argument as to who discovered this structure first. Another student, a German named Moritz Hoffman, who had been present at the initial dissection, claimed five years later that he, not Wirsung, found the duct first. He was not believed.
Giovanni Domenico Santorini (1681–1737), a Venetian, ranks next in seniority. Described as one of the most industrious and thorough anatomists of the eighteenth century, he studied in Pisa under Malpighi and had to content himself with a smaller accessory duct, now known as the duct of Santorini. This runs in parallel to the main duct and drains into the duodenum, typically somewhat above it. Varying significantly in size between individuals, it can serve as a route for enzyme drainage if the primary duct is underdeveloped or obstructed by disease.
Abraham Vater (1684–1751) was a German anatomist. He received his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Wittenberg in 1706 and his medical degree later from the University of Leipzig. By 1732, he had become full professor of anatomy, but also published on botany, pharmacology, and gynecology. He is primarily remembered for describing the ampulla of Vater, the common area where the ducts coming from the gallbladder and pancreas meet and enter the duodenum.
Ruggero Oddi, an Italian from Perugia (1864–1913), lived much later and described a muscular valve or sphincter located at the junction where the common bile duct and the pancreatic duct enter the duodenum. This became widely known as the sphincter of Oddi. It is a circular valve of smooth muscle fibers that control the release of bile and pancreatic enzymes into the duodenum. It relaxes when fats and proteins enter the duodenum to stimulate the flow of pancreatic juices, but contracts during fasting to prevent the unnecessary or harmful entry of digestive fluids into the gastrointestinal tract. He completes the quartet of four innovators who survived the onslaught of those who believe that all eponymous names should be replaced by insipid ones difficult to pronounce.
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