Santorio Santorio, also called Sanctorio Sanctorio, Santorio Santorii, Sanctorius of Padua, Sanctorio Sanctorius and various combinations of these names, was an Italianphysiologist, physician, and professor, who introduced the quantitative approach into the life sciences and is considered the father of modern quantitative experimentation in medicine. He is also known as the inventor of several medical devices. His work De Statica Medicina, written in 1614, saw many publications and influenced generations of physicians.
Life
Santorio's mother was a noblewoman from the Mediterranean coastal town of Capodistria, which is where she gave birth to him. Santorio's father was a nobleman from Friuli working for the Venetian republic. He was educated in his home town and then entered the University of Padua, from which he obtained his medical degree in 1582. Santorio died in Venice.
Work
Santorio worked as the personal physician to a nobleman from 1587 to 1599, at which point he set up a medical practice in Venice. From 1611 to 1624, Santorio was the chair of theoretical medicine at the University of Padua where he performed experiments in temperature, respiration and weight. His practices and thinking followed Hippocratic and Galenic principles, but he was a keen experimentalist.
Inventions
Santorio was the first to use a wind gauge, a water current meter, the pulsilogium, and a thermoscope. Whereas he invented the former two devices, it is possible that the puslilogium was inspired by his friend Galileo Galilei or Paolo Sarpi, both members of Santorio's learned circle of friends in Venice. He also invented a device which he called the "trocar" for removing bladder stones. Santorio introduced the thermoscope in the work titled Sanctorii Sanctorii Commentaria in Artem medicinalem Galeni in 1612. The pulsilogium was probably the first machine of precision in medical history. Extensive experimentation with his new tool allowed Santorio to standardise the Galenic rationale of the pulse and to describe quantitatively various regular and irregular frequences. A century later another physician, de Lacroix, used the pulsilogium to test cardiac function.
Sanctorius studied the so-called perspiratio insensibilis or insensible perspiration of the body, already known to Galen and other ancient physicians, and originated the study of metabolism. For a period of thirty years Santorio used a chair-device to weigh himself and 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 because for every eight pounds of food he ate, he excreted only 3 pounds of waste. Santorio also applied his weighing device to study his patients, but records of these experiments have been lost. His notable conclusion on finding this was that:
Insensible Perspiration is either made by the Pores of the Body, which is all over perspirable, and cover’d with a Skin like a Net; or it is performed by Respiration through the Mouth, which usually, in the Space of one Day, amounts to about the Quantity of half a Pound, as may plainly be made appear by breathing upon a Glass.
This important experiment is the origin of the significance of weight measurement in medicine. While his experiments were replicated and augmented by his followers and were finally surpassed by those of Lavoisier in 1790, he is still celebrated as the father of experimental physiology. The "weighing chair", which he constructed and employed during this experiment, is also famous.
Grants named after Santorio
In 2018 the Italian Institution Institutio Santoriana – Fondazione Comel created the Centre for the Study of Medicine and the Body in the Renaissance as an International Institution of advanced research in honour of Santorio. The centre offers each year various awards and grants for international scholars that are named after Santorio, such as the Santorio Award for Excellence in Research, and the Santorio Fellowship for Medical Humanities and Science.
