Fallopius was appointed professor of anatomy at Pisa, in the year 1548; and later, at the instance of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo I., he received a professorship at Padua, as successor to Vesalius. Besides the chair of anatomy and surgery and of botany, he also held the office of superintendent of the new botanic garden in that city. Fallopius remained in Padua to the day of his death, which occurred in 1562. He was very properly succeeded by his favorite pupil, Fabricius ab Aquapendente, who had been for some time previously his anatomical demonstrator. His collected works, as published in Venice, 1606, embrace twenty-four treatises distributed in three folio volumes. Only one of his works was published during his lifetime, namely, his Observationes Anatomicae, Venice, 1561, which is considered one of his most valuable books, containing, as it does, most of his discoveries and his animadversions on the works of other anatomists.
This was written as a supplement to the anatomy of Vesalius, for it follows the same order, passes upon the same subjects, corrects the inaccuracies of the Vesalian treatise, and supplies what is wanting. Throughout the work Fallopius treats Vesalius with great respect, and never mentions him without an honorable title. Vesalius wrote an answer to this work, entitled, Observationum Fallopii examen, in which he acknowledges the courtesy of Fallopius, but, as argument progresses, appears to be out of temper.
After the death of Fallopius it was thought that no successor except Vesalius could be found competent to fill his place. Accordingly Vesalius was chosen. The news of his appointment reached him while he was returning from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Unfortunately he was shipwrecked and perished, otherwise history would have afforded an example of the master filling the chair of the pupil.
John Philip Ingrassias
Ingrassias, who lived between the years 1510-1580, was a graduate of the celebrated Paduan School. He described minutely the anatomy of the ear, including the tympanum, fenestrae rotunda and ovalis, the cochlea, the semi-circular canals, and the tensor tympani muscle. His admiring pupils caused his portrait to be painted and placed in the Neapolitan School, with this inscription:—“To Philip Ingrassias, of Sicily, who, by his lectures, restored the science of true Medicine and Anatomy in Naples, his pupils have suspended this portrait as a mark of grateful remembrance”. Ingrassias was a voluminous writer, his chief work being a treatise on osteology, which was published twenty-three years after his death. When the plague depopulated Palermo, in 1575, his devotion was such as to earn for him the title of the Sicilian Hippocrates. Few men have been more earnest workers in medical science. If his fame as an anatomist has not equalled that of others, the cause is to be sought in the multiplicity of competitors, not in lack of zeal and ability.
INGRASSIAS
CHAPTER THIRTEENTH
Commentators and Plagiarists
Medical history furnishes numerous examples of literary theft. In many instances an entire set of anatomical plates has been pirated by unscrupulous publishers. In a few cases both text and plates have been appropriated by medical authors. The most notorious example of this form of theft was furnished by William Cowper (1666-1709), an English surgeon and anatomist, who, having secured three hundred copies of Bidloo’s set of one hundred and five anatomical plates, in 1697 issued the work[26] as his own. Cowper added a few original illustrations to the book.