The papal anatomist: Eustachius in renaissance Rome

Abstract

Bartholomeo Eustachi, usually latinized as Eustachius, was an important anatomist in the 16th century, arguably second only to his contemporary and rival Andreas Vesalius. He was the first to identify several important anatomical structures, including the suprarenal glands, though he was probably not the first to describe the Eustachian tube. However, it has been hard to evaluate his achievements, because during his lifetime he published only some short monographs, and his career as a teacher in Rome is not well documented. He and his assistant P.M. Pini were the first to use copper plate engravings to illustrate human and animal anatomy, but most of their engravings were not published in their time, and the original plates were lost for some 140 years after the death of Eustachius. Early in the 18th century, these plates were rediscovered by the anatomist and papal physician G.M. Lancisi; he published the engravings in a book which aroused much interest and many reprintings. In 1744, Bernhard Siegfried Albinus of Leiden University published a version of these engravings, with commentaries by himself.

The engraved illustrations prepared by Eustachius and Pini are clear and largely accurate. They idealize the findings of actual dissections, and have a diagrammatic quality that facilitates understanding and memory. They are the ancestors of later anatomical atlases, which have helped generations of surgeons in teaching and in planning operations.