Charles Estienne (1504-1564)
was an early exponent of the science of anatomy in France.
Charles was a younger brother of Robert Estienne, the famous
printer, and son to Henri, who Latinized the family name as
Stephanus.
After the usual humanistic
training he studied medicine, and took his doctor's degree at
Paris. He was for a time tutor to Jean-Antoine de Baïf, the
future poet. It is uncertain whether he taught publicly. His
career was interrupted by the oppressive persecutions in which
their religious opinions involved the family.
Éstienne, though from a family
whose classical taste was their principal glory, did not betray
the same servile imitation of the Galenian anatomy as his
contemporary, Jacques Dubois. He appears to have been the first
to detect valves in the orifice of the hepatic veins. He was
ignorant, however, of the researches of the Italian anatomists;
and his description of the brain is inferior to that given sixty
years before by Alessandro Achillini. His comparison of the
cerebral cavities to the human ear has persuaded F. Portal that
he knew the inferior cornua, the hippocampus and its
prolongations; but this is no reason for giving him that honour
to the detriment of the reputation of Achillini, to whom, so far
as historical testimony goes, the first knowledge of this fact
is due.
The researches of Éstienne into
the structure of the nervous system are, however, neither
useless nor inglorious; and the circumstance of demonstrating a
canal through the entire length of the spinal cord, which had
neither been suspected by contemporaries nor noticed by
successors till Jean-Baptiste de Sénac (1693-1770) made it
known, is sufficient to place him high in the rank of anatomical
discoverers.
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