John Dryander, a German physician, whose true name was Eichmann, called himself Dryander in accordance with the custom of adopting names derived from the Latin or Greek languages. He was born about the year 1500 in the Wetterau in Hesse. After obtaining proficiency in mathematics and astronomy, he went to Paris where he studied medicine for several years. Returning to Germany, he engaged in the study of practical anatomy and became a professor in Marburg, in which city he died in the year 1560. He is said to have conducted the first dissections that were made in Marburg, where he taught anatomy for twenty-four years, or from 1536 to 1560.
DRYANDER
Dryander, although he was a partisan of Mondino and da Carpi, and was a fierce and sometimes an unfair opponent of Vesalius, deserves to be regarded as one of the restorers of anatomy. He made several observations upon the distinction between the cortical and the medullary portions of the brain; and was one of the earliest practical anatomists of the sixteenth century to furnish anatomical illustrations. He made important astronomical observations and was the inventor of several useful instruments. He was the author of three medical works of which two were upon anatomy. His Anatomia Mundini, which was published at Marburg in 1541, contains forty-six plates, many of which have been copied from Berengario’s work.
ANATOMICAL FIGURE BY ESTIENNE, 1545
Charles Estienne
SKELETON BY ESTIENNE, 1545
(Reduced one-half)
Charles Estienne, better known by the name of Carolus Stephanus, was a French anatomist whose work is worthy of remembrance. Born in the early part of the sixteenth century, he was given an excellent education. He belonged to a noted Huguenot family of scholars and printers who have made the Estienne name famous. Robert Estienne, the brother of Charles, became the victim of religious persecution; he was obliged to flee to save his life, and for a time the publishing business was conducted by Charles Estienne. The latter also suffered for his faith; he was thrown into a dungeon, where he died in the year 1564. Charles Estienne wrote numerous books on literature, history, forestry and botany. His anatomical treatise, De Dissectione Partium Corporis Humani, appeared at Paris in 1545 with sixty-two full page plates which combine anatomical clearness, beauty of form, and artistic representation. A French translation of Estienne’s Anatomy was published in 1546. This work was printed as far as the middle of the third book as early as the year 1539: some of the plates are dated as early as 1530. The illustrations have been excellently cut in wood; many of them show the entire body, with much ornamentation, so that the proper anatomical part seems small and irrelevant. Some of the plates show the subject in picturesque and even loathsome attitudes. The text of this work is especially valuable for the history of anatomical discovery. Although he was an ardent Galenist, Estienne made numerous original observations in anatomy. He described the synovial glands, a discovery which has been credited to Clopton Havers. Estienne was the first anatomist to discover the canal in the spinal cord; he described the capsule of the liver, a tissue which bears Glisson’s name; and differentiated the eight pair from the sympathetic nerves. He was the first anatomist to see and describe the valves in the veins, which he called apophyses venarum— discovery which has been claimed for Jacobus Sylvius, Cannanus, Amatus and Fabricius.