Santorio Santorio (
March 29 1561 Koper –
February 22 1636 Venice), also called
Santorio Santorii,
Sanctorius of Padua, and various combinations of these names, was an
Italian physiologist,
physician, and
professor. From 1611 to 1624 he was a professor at
Padua where he performed experiments in
temperature,
respiration and
weight. Sanctorius studied what he termed
insensible perspiration and originated the study of
metabolism.
For a period of thirty years Sanctorius weighed himself, everything he ate and drank, as well as his
urine and
feces. He compared the weight of what he had eaten to that of his waste products, the latter being considerably smaller. He produced his theory of
insensible perspiration as an attempt to account for this difference. His findings had little scientific value, but he is still celebrated for his
empirical methodology. The "
weighing chair", which he constructed and employed during this experiment, is also famous.
He is credited with the design of the
clinical thermometer, which he introduced in his
Sanctorii Sanctorii Commentaria in primam fen primi libri Canonis Avicennae, a commentary on
Avicenna's
The Canon of Medicine. He invented a device which he called the
pulsilogium for measuring the pulse which was the first machine system in medical history. A century later another physician, de la Croix, used the pulsilogium to test cardiac function. Sanctorius also invented an early
waterbed. In 1614, he wrote
De statica medicina, a medical text that saw five publications through 1737.
References and external links
- at the Science & Society Picture Library.
- The first man/machine interaction in medicine: the pulsilogium of Sanctorius of Padua, J. Levett and G. Agarwal, Medical instrumentation 13 (Jan.-Feb. 1979), #1, 61–63.
- in the Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia (via Infoplease.)
Category:1561 birthsCategory:1636 deathsCategory:People from KoperCategory:Italian physiciansCategory:Italian physiologistsCategory:Istrian Italiansbs:Santorio Santoriode:Santorio Santorioes:Santorio Santorioeo:Santorio Santoriofr:Santorio Santoriogl:Santorio Santoriohr:Santorio Santorioit:Santorio Santorioja:サントーリオ・サントーリオpl:Santorio Santoriopt:Santorio Santorioro:Santorio Santorioru:Санториоsv:Sanctorilustr:Santorio Santorio
