Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Gabriele Falloppio

  • Conflict about the clitoris: Colombo versus Fallopio

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”– Oscar Wilde The clitoris, a female genital structure anatomically homologous to the penis, was known to the ancients. In 540 BC, the Greek Hipponax made one of the earliest references to it. It was not mentioned by Hippocrates,1 but Arabic, Persian, and Roman writers…

  • Bartolomeo Eustachio of the Anatomical Trinity

    The tube connecting the inner ear to the throat that may become painfully blocked during a plane landing was described in the sixteenth century by Bartolomeo Eustachi—more often known by his Latin name of Eustachio.1 He constituted, along with Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564) and Gabriele Falloppio (1523–1562), the Anatomical Trinity from which the modern science of…

  • Gabriele Falloppio (Fallopius, 1523–1562)

    In the days when the outcome of an oral examination could have depended on the caprices of a whimsical professor, candidates in obstetrics–gynecology might have been asked who first described the tube that leads from the ovary to the uterus, or perhaps who was Dr. Fallopius. Such a mishap is unlikely to happen in this…