Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/526

 as well as of good judgment, certainly justify the favorable opinion expressed by Scarpa upon Leone's work.

Fabricius ab Acquapendente, of whom I have already given some account on a previous page, was distinguished not only as an anatomist and as a physiologist, but also—which was true of his instructor, Fallopius—as a surgeon. From his published writings, however, it appears very clearly that, like Fallopius, he had a decided aversion to the use of the knife; his activities as a surgeon being restricted largely to the improvement of certain of the more bloodless operations (for example, tracheotomy and thoracentesis and operations for the relief of stricture of the urethra). He also invented several new surgical instruments and devised a number of machines for use in orthopaedic practice. He attached great value to the teachings of Celsus and Paulus Aegineta, his writings containing frequent and copious references to these authorities and relatively few data based upon his own experience. In the section which he devotes to the subject of wounds of the abdomen, Fabricius confirms the opinion very generally held by the ancients, viz., that a wound of the small intestine is invariably fatal.

Gaspare Tagliacozzi was born at Bologna in 1546. He studied medicine under Girolamo Cardano, Professor of Medicine, first at Pavia and afterward at Bologna, and received his degree ("Doctor of Philosophy and Medicine") in 1570. Very soon afterward he began teaching surgery, and a little later he also taught anatomy and the theoretical part of medicine. In this work he was so successful that in 1576 he was made a member of the Faculty. He died on November 7, 1599, at the age of fifty-three.

The Italian method of performing plastic operations, says von Gurlt, had already flourished for about one hundred and fifty years before Tagliacozzi took up the subject in serious earnest and attained results of decided scientific value. There are some doubts, however, as to the precise degree of credit that should be awarded Tagliacozzi for his share in the development of the operation which