Sanctorius

Sanctorius
Born	29 March 1561 Capodistria
Died	22 February 1636 [age 70 Venice
Nationality	Italian

Sanctorius Sanctorius (29 March 1561 – 22 February 1636 Venice),^[1] also called Santorio Santorii, Sanctorius of Padua, and various combinations of these names, was an Italian physiologist, physician, and professor.

Sanctorius was born in Capodistria (today Koper). From 1611 to 1624 he was a professor at Padua where he performed experiments in temperature, respiration and weight. Sanctorius studied what he termed insensible perspiration and originated the study of metabolism.

Santorio in his balance

For a period of thirty years Sanctorius weighed himself, 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. This important experiment is the origin of the significance weight measurement is crucial in medicine^[2] He produced his theory of insensible perspiration as an attempt to account for this difference. His findings had little scientific value, but he is still celebrated for his empirical methodology. The "weighing chair", which he constructed and employed during this experiment, is also famous.

He is credited with the design of the clinical thermometer, which he introduced in his Sanctorii Sanctorii Commentaria in primam fen primi libri Canonis Avicennae, a commentary on Avicenna's The Canon of Medicine. He invented a device which he called the pulsilogium for measuring the pulse which was the first machine system in medical history. A century later another physician, de la Croix, used the pulsilogium to test cardiac function. Sanctorius also invented an early waterbed. In 1614, he wrote De statica medicina, a medical text that saw five publications through 1737.

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