Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 608

NICOLAUS STENO (1638-1686) Observationes anatomica. Apud Jacobum Chouët 1662 [xii] 108 pp., 3 fold. plates. 13.2 cm.

A Danish physician, geologist, and clergyman, Steno studied medicine at Copenhagen, Leiden, and Paris. He settled in Italy, first as professor of anatomy at Padua and then in Florence as house physician to Grand Duke Ferdinand II. He served for a brief time as professor and royal anatomist in Copenhagen. Dissatisfied, he returned to Florence where he abandoned his scientific career and entered the priesthood, eventually becoming bishop. As an anatomist, Steno devoted his studies primarily to the muscles and glands and made many important contributions. In his dissertation on the muscles and glands, De musculis et glandulis observationum specimen (1664), he clearly recognized that the heart was a muscle, which was a great advance in the knowledge of this organ. In the present work he assembled a collection of the observations and studies he had made of the glands of the eye, vessels of the nose, salivary and lacrimal glands, and the duct of the parotid gland (Stensen's duct). The text is accompanied by three finely executed folding plates.

See Related Record(s): 536

Cited references: Garrison-Morton 973; Osler 4018; Waller 9226

Gift of John Martin, M.D.