Santorio Santorio

Italian physician, scientist, and scholar

• Born: March 29, 1561
• Birthplace: Capodistria, Republic of Venice (now Koper, Slovenia)
• Died: February 22 or March 6, 1636
• Place of death: Venice (now in Italy)

Santorio was an innovator in physiology, applied medicine, and the use of instruments of precision in the practice of medicine. By quantitative experimentation, he encouraged the use of mathematics and experimentation as analytical tools in the study of physiology and pathology. He also is considered the father of scientific metabolism for his studies in “insensible perspiration” and was likely an inventor of the thermometer.

Early Life

Santorio Santorio (sahn-TOR-yoh) was born to Antonio, who had settled in Capodistria (now Koper) as the chief steward of ordnance in the Republic of Venice, and Elisabetta Cordonia of Capodistria, a noblewoman. The couple also had another son and two daughters.

Santorio was initially educated at Capodistria and then sent to Venice, where he lived with the high-ranking Morosoni family, friends of the Santorios. The young man, whose first and last names were the same, was given the best of tutors, who were educating the Morosoni sons. As a result, Santorio acquired an unusually firm grounding in classical languages, philosophy, mathematics, and literature.

At fourteen, Santorio entered the Archilyceum of Padua, where he studied philosophy and then medicine, the usual sequence. In the late sixteenth century, the University of Padua was known throughout Europe as one of the best universities, and it had a history of distinguished faculty, including professors Andreas Vesalius, Realdo Colombo, and Gabriello Fallopio. Santorio’s professors included physicist Giacomo Zabarella and, in medicine, Bernardino Paterno and Girolamo Fabrici. Having completed his medical degree in 1582, Santorio spent three years in clinical work and then began to practice medicine.

Biographers and commentators have questioned whether or not Santorio was sent to Poland after its king had reportedly asked Paduan administrators to send a brilliant medical doctor there. Santorio might have gone to Poland for as many as fourteen years, but he was consistently appearing in Hungary and Croatia as a medical consultant; he also returned to Venice for months at a time.

It was in 1607, when Santorio happened to be in Venice, that hired killers assaulted Paolo Sarpi, an eminent intellectual and a state counselor in Venice, and left him near death. Sarpi had incurred the wrath of the Papacy when he blocked Pope Paul V’s efforts to wrest Venice into papal jurisdiction. Santorio and Fabrici were summoned to treat Sarpi’s brutal wounds. When it was known that the assassins escaped to the papal territory, Sarpi is reported to have said, “I recognize the style of the Roman curia” worn by Sarpi. Many biographers of Santorio cite this episode because Sarpi had protected the University of Padua from papal control. The Republic of Venice was kinder than was the Papacy to intellectuals and men of genius. For example, it is well known that Galileo had the misfortune of developing many of his scientific investigations in territory ruled by the Papacy.

Life’s Work

One of Santorio’s first important books, Methodi vitandorum errorum omnium qui in arte medica contingunt (1602; method of combating all the errors that occur in the art of medicine), a work essentially dealing with differential diagnosis of various diseases, was considered brilliant by contemporaries. The book brought instant fame to Santorio as a clinician and a consultant and with it high respect from the Venetian intellectuals. Although based largely on Santorio’s own experiments, it contains references to the work of Hippocrates, Galen, and Avicenna, three illustrious names in the history of medicine. In this treatise, Santorio discusses the pulsilogium, an instrument used to track the motion and rest of the artery, asserting that everything can be measured exactly, observed, and kept in mind for comparison. It is believed by many authorities that the “pulsilogium” was invented by Galileo but that Santorio utilized the instrument and popularized its value. This particular instrument, along with others, forged new standards in observations in physiology and pathology.

Ultimately, this innovative book led to the appointment of Santorio, in 1611, to a professorship of theoretical medicine at the University of Padua for six years, a term that was eventually renewed for another six years. Students came from all over Europe, especially from Germany, to attend lectures; Santorio’s classes were popular and crowded. Galileo, the unrivaled father of experimental science, had taught mathematics at the University of Padua from 1593 to 1610. Both Galileo and the brilliant philosopher Giordano Bruno were Santorio’s close friends. The preeminent William Harvey from England, who discovered the theory of the circulation of the blood, had been a student at Padua too, although he never met Santorio. At Padua the professors of the theory of medicine were expected to make commentaries on the aphorisms of Hippocrates, Galen’s art of medicine, and Avicenna’s first fen (an Arabic word meaning part). Santorio’s commentaries on these works became the bedrock of his lectures and subsequently his books.

A decade following the appearance of Santorio’s first book, he published his Commentaria in artem medicinalem Galeni (1612; commentary on the art of medicine of Galen). In addition to following traditional paths, the respected physician made his first mention of the air thermometer. In the history of medicine, it has been discussed at length whether Galileo or Santorio invented the thermometer; evidence points to Galileo as the one who conceptualized a kind of thermometer and to Santorio as the discoverer of a variant and the first physician to utilize the thermometer and discuss it in publications.

With a heavy schedule of medical practice and university lecturing, which also drew prominent physicians, Santorio still found time to publish Ars de statica medicina sectionibus aphorismorum septem comprehensa (1614; Medicina Statica: Or, Rules of Health in Eight Sections of Aphorisms , 1676), the book that seems to have captured the imagination and attention of more contemporaries and subsequent medical professionals than any other of his publications. This relatively short work discusses weight variation experienced by the body from ingestion to excretion, with weighing procedures after purgation. Experiments that were made over twenty-five years on more than ten thousand subjects were discussed, using scales and other instruments of measurement. The main thesis of the work is that “insensible perspiration” (as opposed to actual perspiration) is capable of systematic recording or weighing, more than all forms of combined sensible body wastes, and is variable according to sleep, cold, fever, and sexual and other activity.

Having caused a sensation, Medicina Statica engendered twenty-eight Latin editions and translations into many other languages, along with four Latin editions with commentaries by Martin Lister, the well-known physician to Charles I of England. The book led many to cite Santorio as the father of the science of metabolism. Many other physicians were inspired to study “insensible perspiration” and to write books on their own experiments. Santorio was now at the apex of his accomplishments and fame. He was deluged with requests for consultations, and in 1616 he was appointed president of the Collegio Veneto in Padua, a new center founded to eliminate abuses in the medical faculty.

When Santorio resigned his academic post at the end of his second term as professor, the Venetian senate, recognizing his enormous contributions to medicine, to the university, and to the republic, granted him a lifetime title of professor and also his full salary for life. Despite invitations by the University of Bologna and those at Messina and Pavia, he rejected them all and returned to Venice.

Now in his mid-sixties, Santorio published Commentaria in primam fen primi libri canonis Avicennae (1625; commentaries on the first part of the first book of the Canon of Avicenna), which pleased his contemporaries because of its practicality; it remains a classic medical text. The book emphasized precision instruments in medical practice, a technique that helped physicians to sharpen observations and diagnoses. He discussed the thermometer and the “pulsilogium,” among other instruments. In the commentary on the Avicenna book, Santorio shows the importance of humidity in disease treatment and depicts three types of instruments for humidity measurements. The lack of specific recordings of pulse rates or temperatures of people is conspicuous. Future medical specialists were to work on statistics, whereas Santorio merely explains the instruments.

Another part of the book on the fen of Avicenna is given much attention—Santorio’s attack on astrology and astrologers. Padua at this time was a virtual nest of astrologists, and there were several astrologers on the faculty of the University of Padua. In fact, their influence throughout the Venetian Republic was powerful, and their attack on medical science and on Santorio was ferocious; still, the venerable doctor survived the counterattacks of the diviners. Santorio’s practice flourished along with his reputation, and some of the most important people came to his office.

Santorio was appointed president of the Venetian College of Physicians, and, when Venice was besieged by plague in 1630, he was pressed into service as chief health officer, subsequently making a report to the health officer of the city, a document that still exists and is preserved in the General State Archives in Venice.

Never married, Santorio also was considered to be a misogynist. He was known to be frugal, and biographers agree that he was interested in amassing a fortune and did succeed in becoming wealthy. An engraving by Giacomo Piccini shows the celebrated physician to have had an elongated face, a long goatee, and a furrowed brow. His skeletal remains indicate that he was tall. His style in lectures that were published and in conversations with his brilliant friends indicate that he was archly ironic—contemporary writers agree that he possessed an unusually high level of critical intelligence. All agree on his substantiated contributions to medicine.

Santorio died of a disease of the urinary tract and was buried in the Church dei Servi, which ultimately was destroyed by Napoleon I. A casque containing his bones (together with the bones of others) was given to a professor of anatomy at Padua. He buried the bones but preserved the skull, which today rests in the Museum of Anatomy of Padua. Santorio left a number of bequests to his immediate family and to other relatives. He also granted money to establish a medical college at Padua, to be named “Santorio,” and a sum to the Medical College of Venice to have a mass said yearly for his soul on Saint Luke’s Day, an annual celebration of the patron saint of medicine.

Significance

The history of medicine began in the seventeenth century when Galileo, Giordano Bruno, and Santorio Santorio, among others, helped to free science from dogma. Santorio helped to construct the foundation on which modern medicine is based—the necessity to experiment, the measurement of research through observation and instruments, and the need for determination of positive, provable data.

Santorio’s contribution in the virtually unknown field of the amelioration of the condition of invalids (the disabled) advanced medicine in a significant area and signaled to future generations of physicians the need to work further on its theory and practice.

Santorio’s invention, modification, and employment of instruments provided his profession with measuring devices so that future practitioners could develop resources in recording data for the treatment and the prevention of diseases. Santorio’s commentaries on past generations of scholars and his own innovative theories and practice in physiology and pathology significantly advanced medical knowledge. His book on static medicine, apart from William Harvey’s theory of blood circulation, was of quintessential importance to medicine. Trained exhaustively in the humanities as well as in the sciences, Santorio developed concepts and techniques of diagnosis well ahead of his time. His research contributed to the advancement of medicine throughout Europe, especially in the first third of the seventeenth century, and have continued to serve medicine in its attempt to treat and to prevent the development of diseases.

Bibliography

Castiglioni, Arturo. Life and Work of Sanctorius. Translated by Emilie Recht. New York: Medical Life Press, 1931. A nearly 800-page biographical account of Santorio’s life and works, with illustrations and a bibliography.

Drake, Stillman. Galileo at Work: His Scientific Biography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. An excellent biography of Galileo that also encompasses his relationships with other scientists, including Santorio. There is a discussion of the pulsilogium and the thermoscope, both of which instruments advanced the course of science and which involved studies and practical application by Santorio.

French, Roger. William Harvey’s Natural Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. This book, although about Harvey’s work, discusses Santorio’s theories of blood circulation.

McMullin, Ernan, ed. Galileo, Man of Science. New York: Basic Books, 1967. The book is a compilation of essays by worldwide authorities on Galileo, with an evaluation of Santorio in chapter 13. Considerable attention (with illustrations) is paid to medical instruments, including the thermoscope and the pulsilogium, a milestone in the history of medical instruments.

Major, Ralph H. “Santorio Santorio.” Annals of Medical History 10 (September, 1938): 369-381. A concise treatment of the life and work of Santorio, especially of his books on Herodotus, Galen, and Avicenna. Discusses the medical instruments associated with Santorio, with illustrations and careful descriptions of their design and use.

Middleton, W. E. Knowles. A History of the Thermometer and Its Use in Meteorology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966. This authoritative history of the thermometer describes Santorio’s contribution to its the invention.

Mitchell, S. Weir. The Early History of Instrumental Precision in Medicine. New Haven, Conn.: Tuttle, Morehouse, and Taylor, 1892. An overview of the development and use of medical instruments in the seventeenth century, acknowledging Santorio’s considerable importance in medicine and the instruments that his innovations utilized.

Sigerist, Henry E. The Great Doctors. Translated by Eden Paul and Cedar Paul. New York: W. W. Norton, 1933. Places Santorio in the history of medicine. Sigerist claims that Harvey’s theory of blood circulation became more important than Santorio’s “insensible perspiration” theory because Harvey was more precise and organized in his use of language.