Tag: University of Padua
-
University of Padua School of Medicine
JMS PearceHull, England The four great early schools of medicine were in Alexandria, Bologna, Pavia, and Padua. Herophilus and Erasistratus initiated rational anatomy and physiology at the Alexandrian school of medicine founded c. 300 BC. In the second century AD, they were succeeded by Rufus of Ephesus—the medical link between Hippocrates of Cos, Galen of…
-
Book review: Casanova’s Guide to Medicine
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom The eighteenth-century Italian Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) is today best remembered for legendary amorous pursuits that resulted in his name becoming a part of the English language. What has been forgotten, however, is that he was a remarkable and erudite polymath. He graduated as a lawyer from the University of Padua…
-
Fortunio Liceti (1577-1567)—Aristotelean teratologist
Fortunio Liceti’s mother was seven months pregnant when on a sea voyage to Rapallo (on the coast of Liguria) she went into labor—supposedly because of the motions of the ship. It has been said that her baby was so small that it fit into the palm of one hand. The father, a physician, placed it…
-
Costanzo Varolio, who described the pons
The pons is a broad band of nerve fibers linking the medulla oblongata and cerebellum with the midbrain. It serves to relay messages sent downstream from the cerebral cortex to the cerebellum, the medulla, and the spinal cord. Shaped as a protuberance resembling a bridge with the brainstem flowing under it like a canal, the…
-
Hieronymus Fabricius of Acquapendente (1537–1619)
The Bursa of Fabricius is a sac-like organ responsible for producing immunogenic B-lymphocytes and present only in the cloaca of birds. But the man who described it, far from being an obscure ornithologist, was a reputed professor of anatomy and surgery. Born in 1537 near Orvieto in central Italy, he had as a youngster a…
-
Giovanni Batista Morgagni (1602–1771)
Father of fifteen and teacher of thousands, Batista Morgagni became immortally famous by going one step further than his illustrious predecessors at Padua, describing not the normal anatomy of hanged criminals but the damaged organs of patients dying from disease. For this he is remembered as the father of pathological anatomy. At the University of…
-
Antonio Scarpa, anatomist (1752–1832)
Students graduating from a university not uncommonly leave and seek employment elsewhere, but by the excellence of their work attain great fame and as such repay their alma mater for their early education. This was the case of Antonio Scarpa. Entering the University of Padua at age fifteen, he studied under the famous Battista Morgagni…