Baglivi, Giorgio
Name |
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Birthname | Gjuro Baglivi | ||||
born on | 8 September 1688 (greg.) at 05:40 (= 05:40 AM ) | ||||
Place | Ragusa, Italy, 36n55, 14e44 | ||||
Timezone | LMT m14e44 (is local mean time) | ||||
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Biography
Italian physician and scientist. He made important contributions to clinical education, based on his own medical practice, and in De Fibra Motrice advanced the theory that the solid parts of organs are more crucial to their good functioning than their fluids.
Baglivi travelled extensively in Italy, where he worked in hospitals in Padua, Venice, Florence and Bologna and in Holland and England (1688-1692). He was Assistant to Marcello Malpighi first in Bologna and then in Rome (1691-1694). He was appointed Physician to Popes Innocent XII and Clement XI, Teacher of Surgery and Anatomy at La Sapienza, Rome in 1696 and Professor of Theoretical Medicine in 1700. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in July 1698.
Baglivi conducted experiments on dogs and frogs, carried out autopsies and made microscopic examinations of muscle fibres and the membranes surrounding the brain (the meninges and dura mater). He dissected such animals as lions, tortoises, snakes and deer, made morphological and physiological discoveries and experimented with toxic drugs. He felt that physicians had too easily become slaves to theories, systems and hypotheses. In keeping with the spirit of his times, he attacked the medico-philosophical systems, and instead emphasised the Hippocratic principles of sound clinical observation.
Being inclined towards mathematics and quantification in medicine, Baglivi viewed the physiological processes in mechanical terms, behaving like the parts of a machine.
He died on June 15, 1707 in Rome.
Events
Source Notes
Sy Scholfield quotes Henry Ernest Sigerist's book, "The Great Doctors: A Biographical History of Medicine" 1933 (New York: Dover, 1971), p. 171: "Baglivi was born in poor circumstances at Ragusa- born at sunrise on September 8, 1688. The name of the family was not Baglivi, but Armeno, which perhaps gives a clue to its origin." [1].
Categories
- Vocation : Medical : Physician
- Vocation : Science : Biology (anatomist)