Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 399

SANTORIO SANTORIO (1561-1636) Medicina statica: being the aphorisms of Sanctorius . . . to which is added, Dr. Keil's Medicina statica Britannica. By John Quincy. T. Longman and J. Newton 1737 5th ed. viii, 463 [17] pp., front., fold. plate. Copy 1: 19.3 cm. Contemporary calf; Copy 2: 19.6 cm.

Santorio (or Sanctorius) was a graduate of Padua and returned there at the age of fifty to take the chair of medicine. He experimented unceasingly, using himself as the subject of his experiments. In his original physiological studies of weight gain and loss, respiration, pulse, body temperature, and other metabolic processes, he was a leading representative of the new Iatrophysical School (see No. 496). Santorio invented a clinical thermometer and other devices, most of which were forgotten for a hundred years until they were revived and improved upon for more general use. Crude as they were, however, his quantitative experiments opened a new approach in the blossoming field of physiology, which expanded through the studies of such men as Borelli, Malpighi, Le Boë, and Helmont. The first edition of the present work appeared in 1614 and was an astounding success, going through many editions and translations for a century and a half. The book was first translated into English in 1676 and, in 1712, was translated by Quincy (see No. 712) in a series of editions that continued into the nineteenth century. The frontispiece depicts the famous balance seat in which Santorio sat in a suspended chair counterbalanced by weights so that he could determine the amount of respiration (or, in his term, "insensible perspiration") which took place through the skin. Quincy has included the aphorisms of James Keill (1673-1719) in the book largely for comparative purposes. Keill, a physician of Northampton, performed Santorio's experiments in England's more northerly climate with somewhat different results. Also included here are seven of Quincy's essays on agues, fevers, animal fiber, gout, leprosy, the King's evil, and venereal diseases.

See Related Record(s): 496 712

Cited references: Cushing S71 (1723 ed.); Osler 3915 (1st ed., 1712); Waller 8487 (1720 ed.)

Copy 2: Gift of Hans L. Ehrenhaft, M.D