Jean Fernel

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Jean Fernel

Jean François Fernel (in Latin, Fernelius) (Montdidier 1497–Fontainebleau 1558) was a French physician who introduced the term "physiology" to describe the study of the body's function. He was the first person to describe the spinal canal. The lunar crater Fernelius is named after him.

In the 1500s, Fernel suggested that fat could trigger human taste buds, but scientists rejected the idea until a recent study (carried out by Purdue University in 2001) proved it plausible.

He was born at Montdidier, and after receiving his early education at his native town, entered the College of Sainte-Barbe, Paris. At first he devoted himself to mathematical and astronomical studies; his Cosmotheoria (1528) records a determination of a degree of the meridian, which he made by counting the revolutions of his carriage wheels on a journey between Paris and Amiens.

But from 1534 he gave himself up entirely to medicine, a which he graduated in 1530. His extraordinary general erudition, and the skill and success with which he sought to revive the study of the old Greek physicians, gained him a great reputation, and ultimately the office of physician to the court. He practised with great success, and at his death in 1558 left behind him an immense fortune.

He also wrote Monalosphaerium, sive astrolabii genus, generalis horaril structura et USUS (1526); De proportionibus (1528); De evacuandi ratione (1545); De abditis rerum causis (1548); and Medicina ad Henricum II (1554).