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Biography of SanctoriusName: SanctoriusBirth Date: March 29, 1561 Death Date: February 22, 1636 Place of Birth: Capo d'Istria, Italy Nationality: Italian Gender: Male Occupations: physiologist, physician Sanctorius The Italian physician and physiologist Sanctorius (1561-1636) is noted for his application of quantitative methods to the study of human physiology and pathology.Sanctorius, the Latin name of Santorio Santorio, was born on March 29, 1561, at Capo d'Istria. The University of Padua, the leading medical institution of the period, provided his medical education between 1575 and 1582. After receiving his medical degree, he practiced as a physician up to 1599 in Croatia (Yugoslavia), where he had been invited by some Croatian nobility. In 1611 he assumed the chair of theoretical medicine at Padua and held this distinguished post until 1624, when he went to Venice. He died in Venice on Feb. 22, 1636. He endowed an annual lectureship at Padua, which is still continued.As is typical of many pioneers, Sanctorius, without realizing the full value of his ideas, recognized the necessity of measurement in medicine. Therefore he directed all his energies toward one goal: the development of instruments …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…catheter for removing kidney stones. The best-known of these instruments is the thermometer described by Sanctorius in his commentary on Arab medicine. He also developed an apparatus for measuring pulse rates by comparing them to the swings of a pendulum on strings of different lengths. Then, by comparing the string lengths, the pulse rates were calibrated as a function of time. Thus, medieval medicine and Renaissance physics were combined in the imaginative mind of Sanctorius to develop this important instrument. Further Reading There are no books on Sanctorius in English. Most biographical accounts are in Italian. The closest to a definitive biography is in Serbian by Mirko Drazen, Santorio Santorio (Zagreb, 1952); it includes a few pages of summary in English. For background see Henry E. Sigerist, The Great Doctors: A Biographical History of Medicine (trans. 1933); Ralph H. Major, A History of Medicine, vol. 1 (1954); and Katherine B. Shippen, Men of Medicine (1957). |