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 antorio Santorio
(as known as Santorio Santorii, Sanctorius of Padua, and various
combinations of these names), was born on March 26, 1561 in Justinopolis, Istria (later Capodistria, now Koper,
Slovenia).His father, Antonio Santorio, was a nobleman from Friuli and a high official of the Venetian Republic who was sent to Justinopolis as Bombardier and Chief Steward of Munitions. His mother, Elisabetta Cordona, was the heiress of a local noble family. |
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medical scientist born in |
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| Santorio was educated in Justinopolis and then Venice. He shared the
same tutors as the patrician Morosini's sons and received a thorough knowledge of
classical languages and literature.
In 1575, Santorio entered the University of Padua where he studied philosophy and medicine. He received his medical degree in 1582 at the age of 21. Two of his biographers, Caparroni and Castiglioni say that immediately after completing his medical degree Santorio went to Poland as the personal physician to the King and the upper aristocracy. It is now generally agreed that this could not be correct, and that rather he was in Croatia (where?) between 1587 and 1599 as the personal physician of a leading local nobleman, probably Count Zrinski.
In 1599 he set up a medical practice in Venice where he spent the rest of his life. He quickly became part of the circle of learned men (the circle) that met in Andrea (?) Morosini's home, a meeting place for the proponents of the new science. He became friends with Galileo (1564-1642), fra Paolo Sarpi (1552-1623), Girolamo Fabrici, Giambattista Della Porta (1535-1615), and Giovanfrancesco Sagredo (1571-1620), among others. In 1607, together with Fabrizio (or Fabrici?), he treated and cured Sarpi after an attempted assasination. His adaptation of the pendulum to medical practice was probably inspired by discussions with Galileo on the latter's experiments with pendulums in 1602. Santorio described the medical use of the pendulum in a book, Methodi vitandorum errorum [...] in arte medica [Methods to avoid errors in medical practice], published in late 1602 or early 1603. He was a pioneer in the use of physical measurements in medicine; his most famous apparatus was a large balance to study metabolic transformations. His own great achievement was the introduction of quantitative experimentation into biological science. In his Methodus vitandorum errorum [...] in arte medica [Methods to avoid errors in medical practice] which he published in late 1602 or early 1603. In his comprehensive study on the method of healing which he dedicated to Ferdinand of Austria, he mentioned a few measuring instruments, including the medical use of the pendulum, a large balance to study metabolic transformations - his most famous apparatus. Among those who volunteered for Santorio's experiments was Galileo who in 1593 had invented a "pulsilogium" (pulsiometer), a rudimentary water thermometer which, for the first time, allowed for the measuring of temperature variations. It was a device that consisted of a long glass tube inverted in a sealed jar that containing both air and water. When the jar was heated, the air expanded and pushed the liquid up the tube. The water level in the tube could be compared at different temperatures to show relative changes as heat was added or removed. The predecessor to the thermometer, the thermoscope is a thermometer without a scale, indicates differences in temperature only ie it can show if the temperature is higher, lower or the same, but unlike a thermometer it cannot measure the difference nor can the result be recorded for future reference. The thermoscope was widely used by a group of scientists in Venice that included and was attributed to Galileo. It was only a small step from the thermoscope to the thermometer. Santorio's passion for describing phenomena in terms of numbers led him to invent his own "pulsilogium" (a pulse clock), and then also the thermoscope to which he was the first to add a scale, thereby transforming it into a thermometer. Both of these instruments are also mentioned by Galileo, and, especially in the case of the thermoscope, so there has been controversy as to who was the actual inventor of both the "pulsilogium" and the thermoscope. Both may best be described as products of the circle. However, it was Santorio who first used the thermometer for medical purposes. He applied a numerical scale to his thermoscope which had previously only been used to measure air temperature, to measuring human body temperature, thereby adapting it into the first thermometer - in his Commentaria in artem medicinalem Galeni (1612) which he dedicated to Andrea Morosini, he makes the first printed mention of an air thermometer. He is thus given credit as being the inventor of the thermometer. "The patient grasps the bulb" of the thermometer, he wrote, "or breathes upon it into a hood, or takes the bulb into his mouth, so that we can tell if the patient be better or worse." Unfortunately, the accuracy of Santorio's air thermometer was poor since the effects of varying air pressure on the thermometer were not understood at that time. It was not until precisely one hundred years after Santorio's documentation of his precurser thermoscope, however, that Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686-1736) - a German physicist who had invented the alcohol thermometer in 1709 - then invented the modern (mercury) thermometer in 1714. Santorio's use of the thermometer and other devices for measuring and quantifying the body's workings helped to take much of the mysticism out of medicine, but he did not stop there. He also invented a pendulum for measuring the pulse rate, a special syringe for extracting bladder stones, a bathing bed. Beyond medicine he invented a hygrometer to measure humidity, a wind gauge and a device to measure the force of water currents. Ever inventive, Santorio studied digestion by constructing a wooden frame that supported a chair, bed, and work table - his most famous experiment. The study of bodily weight In 1614, Santori published De statica medicina et de responsione ad staticomasticem. Aphorismorum sectionibus septem comprehensa, [Concerning Static Medicine], the first systematic study of basal metabolism and the work that 'introduced quantitative experimentation into biological science'. "In a letter to Galileo he (Santorio) explained that his work De medicina was based on two principles: first, Hippocrates' view that medicine is essentially the addition of what is lacking and the removal of what is superfluous; and second, experimentation. The origin of "static medicine" was, in fact, the Hippocratic conception that health consists in the harmony of the humors. One expression of this harmony is the equilibrium between the substances consumed by the organism and those rejected by it. According to this view, pathological conditions should be accompanied by a quantitave disequilibrium of the exchanges between the living body and its surroundings. To verify this suppodition, Santorio turned to quantitative experimentation. |
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In this book, Santori briefly describes the results of a his most famous experiment, actually a long series of experiments, that he conducted on himself with a scale and other measuring instruments. This research into metabolism was then known as perspiratio insensibilis or 'insensible perspiration', a term that Santorio invented to account for differences in body weight. He believed that weight was gained or lost through the pores or during respiration, and through a long series of experiments and careful record-keeping he established that a large part of excretion occurs invisibly through the skin. He devised an elaborate weighing chair - a platform suspended from the ceiling with an enormous (steelyard) balance - and with this recorded changes in his weight. The device is operated in a negative feedback mode, employs the concept of transduction, and measures pulse through another dimension--length. More than 100 years after its invention, the pulsilogium found useful application by de la Croix in measurements of cardiac function during "electrification." "For thirty years, Santorio slept, ate, worked, and made love in the weighing contraption to record how much his weight changed as he ate, fasted, or excreted." [© Frank I. Katch, William D. McArdle, Victor L. Katch. 1997.] Often depriving himself of food and drink, Santorio determined that the daily change in body mass approached 1.25 kg. From this research Santorio concluded that perspiration insensibilis, which had been known since Erasistratus but which was considered imponderable, could be determined by systematic weighing; that it is, in itself, greater than all forms of sensible bodily excretions combined; and that it is not constant but varies considerably as a function of several internal and external factors, for example, cold and sleep lessen it and fever increases it" (Dictionary of Scientific Biography). This little book of aphorisms drew worldwide attention, made Santorio Santorio famous throughout Europe, and is today considered a medical classic. There is only one copy of the first edition listed in NUC (Yale) and only one of the second edition (NLM). A third copy was published in Venice by Marc'antonio Brogiollo in 1634. In 1728, the fourth edition, in full leather binding, was translated to English and published in London by J. Osborn and T. Longman and J. Newton with the title Medicina Statica: Being the Aphorisms of Sanctorius. The translantion included large explanations to which was added Dr. Keil's Medicina Statica Britannica, with Comparative Remarks and Explanations. A fifth edition was published in 1737. Academic and medical career In 1611 Santori was appointed to the chair of theoretical medicine at the University of Padua with an initial salary of 800 ducats, later raised to 1500 (though this information may be in error, as Padua stated salaries in florins, not ducats). Originally he was supposed to have held the chair for six years; but at the end of that period, in 1617, the Venetian Senate extended his contract for six more years and granted him an exceptionally high salary. He continued to teach there until his retirement in 1624.
Although in treating his patients Santorio did not stray far from Hippocratic and Galenic practice (based on the notion of a balance of the fluids, or "humors"), in his theory and method of investigation he differed a great deal from the classical authors. Rather than relying on authority in the first instance, as so many of his colleagues still did, Santorio argued that one should first rely on sense experience, then on reasoning, and only lastly on authority. Rather than describing the body and its functions in terms of Aristotelian (and Galenic) elements and qualities, Santorio argued throughout his career that the fundamental properties were mathematical ones, such as number, position, and form. The body was like a clock, the workings of which were determined by the shapes and positions of its interlocking parts. Although he did not explain the role of nutrition in weight gain or loss, Santorio nevertheless inspired later researchers in metabolism. 'Through most of the 17th and 18th centuries Santorio's name was linked with that of physiologist William Harvey (1578-1657) as the greatest figure in physiology and experimental medicine because of his introduction of precision instruments for quantitative studies. He was also the founder of modern metabolic research' (Garrison and Morton n. 572.1). Santorio Santorio died in Venice on February 22 (or March 6?), 1636. |
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While
teaching in Padua, Santorio carried on a busy practice with the Venetian
aristocracy. When he retired, the Senate awarded him both the continuation
of his salary and the permanent title of professor which he held until his
death. Santorio spent the remainder of his life in Venice devoting himself
wholly to the practice of medicine and there amassed a large fortune. In
1630 the Venetian government put him in charge of dealing with the plague.