Realdo Colombo

Matteo Colombo Realdo or Latinized Renaldus Columbus ( * 1516 in Cremona, † 1559 in Rome ) was an Italian anatomist and surgeon.

Life

Realdo Colombo was born in Cremona, the son of a pharmacist Antonio Colombo. About his early life is hardly provides something his birth year is sometimes also dated to 1510. He pursued an education in Milan and probably practiced for some time his father's profession. Then he turned to the surgery and got seven years with Giovanni Antonio Lonigo. In 1538 he enrolled at the University of Padua, where he was regarded as exceptionally good student of anatomy soon. While still a student he was teaching at the university. In 1542, he went briefly to Venice to assist Lonigo. But he went back to Padua in 1543 and took over the following year, Andreas Vesalius ' post, who had traveled to oversee the pressure Humani Corporis Fabrica De his book to Switzerland. Colombo remained for two years in that capacity in Padua. Then he moved at the behest of Cosimo I in 1546 to Pisa. There he worked with Michelangelo. He intended to issue, together with Michelangelo an illustrated anatomy work to make Vesalius competition. To this end, it never came, probably because of Michelangelo's advanced age. 1549 took over Colombo a chair at the " Sapienza" of Rome, a position he held until his death. 1556 he obduzierte the body of Ignatius of Loyola.

Work

His own anatomical work, De Re Anatomica, published Colombo in 1559, shortly before his death. Many discoveries described therein overlapped with those who Gabriele Fallopio had made the same, including the clitoris. Fallopios book Observationes Anatomicae appeared two years later, however, claimed this to have it completed before Colombo. The Colombo ascribed discoveries belongs to the pulmonary circulation, which allowed William Harvey's pioneering concept of the body in circular circulating blood and anticipated to some extent. In fact, the pulmonary circulation had already been six years earlier described by the Spanish anatomist Michael Servetus, but Colombo's discovery is considered to be independent thereof, own performance. Another important finding was that the heart is only active contracts, previously you had the opposite view. Colombo physiological observations, ie the action of the heart and the direction of flow of the blood, based on vivisection of animals.

Colombo's reputation never reached in his lifetime such proportions as that of its competitors and fallopian Vesalius, with whom he often came into public disputes. At the latest since 1555, was a very bad relationship with Vesalius may have helped that Colombo had already proved against him during his time in Padua several technical errors. Fallopio again still accusing him of his death out of plagiarism.

Publications

  • De Re Anatomica Libri XV. (Venice, 1559 )

Swell

  • Heinz Schott (ed.): Milestones of Medicine. Haren mountain, Dortmund 1996. ISBN 3-611-00536-3.
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