Volcher Coiter

Volcher Coiter (* 1534 in Groningen, called † July 5, 1576 in France, also Volcher Coyter, Koyter, Volcherus ) was a Dutch physician, anatomist and bird watchers.

His guardian was the Italian physician and naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi, about life Coiters little is known. It is possible that Coiter, which dealt mainly with anatomy and physiology, has been studying with the German physician Leonhart Fuchs in Tübingen.

Life

They say he was in Padua in Falloppio and in Rome at Eustachi. From 1562 on he taught at Bologna, where he had previously visited Aldrovandi lessons, surgery and logic, until he was arrested by the Inquisition in 1566 and imprisoned for a year because he had joined the Reformation. Between 1566 and 1569 he served the Margrave Ludwig VI. in Amberg. 1569 he was appointed by the City Council at the Nuremberg town physician and anatomist ( dissector ) appointed. He held the post until his death. Recommended probably him, the German physician and botanist Rudolf Jakob Camerarius. In 1575 he was recruited as a military doctor Johann Casimir von Pfalz - simmering during a campaign against France. He dies in Champagne, while the army of the Count is on the march back to the peace treaty of July 2, 1576.

Coiter, who was the first who treated the embryology as a separate, full-fledged medical discipline, had become famous for his observations on chicken embryos whose development he described to hatch every day. He also described the female genitalia in Externarum et Internarum Principalium Humani Corporis of 1573rd He also turned on the observation that freshly removed Herzgewebsportionen continue to beat for a long time, and that the longest continues to beat the deep in the heart tissue, where it likely the first was, who described this phenomenon.

He also studied intensively the anatomy and behavior of the birds and published drawings of the skeletons of cranes, cormorants, parrots and green woodpeckers.

Works

• De humani corporis ossibus et cartilaginibus tabulae, Bologna 1566 ( digitized version of the Kiel University Library )
• Externarum et corporis humani internarum principalium partium tabulae atque anatomicae Exercitationes observationesque variae, novis et artificiosissimis figuris illustratae, Nuremberg 1572
• Diversorum animalium sceletorum explicationes, cum lectionibus Fallopii de partibus similaribus humani corporis, Nuremberg 1575