Realdo Colombo
Although little is known about his early life, it is known he took his undergraduate education in Milan, where he studied philosophy,[1] and he appears to have pursued his father's profession for a short while afterwards.
Realdo Colombo studied philosophy in Milan, and then he trained to be a surgeon for several years under a Venetian named Giovanni Antonio Plato, also known as Lonigo or Leonicus.
By 1538, during the years of Andreas Vesalius, Columbo had arrived at Padua where he studied medicine, anatomy, and he lectured to arts students on sophistics, or logic.
Vesalius was away in Basel when Columbo was temporarily appointed to teach in his place, and eventually, Colombo received this position more permanently.
Colombo was appointed to one of the posts in surgery at the University of Padua in 1541 to replace Vesalius while he traveled to Basel in order to supervise the printing of De Humani Corporis Fabrica.
Vesalius was a Galenic expert, trained in Leuven, whereas Colombo began his study of anatomy as a surgeon.
Finally, Colombo refers frequently to Lonigo as his teacher of surgery and anatomy, never mentioning Vesalius.
His sons, Lazarus and Phoebus, were responsible for overseeing the final stages of the publishing process of his book after Colombo’s death interrupted it.
Realdo Colombo did not accept the work of previous anatomists without proof, and in some cases sought to criticize or discredit them.
His use of vivisection to examine the contractions of the heart and arteries contradicted Galen’s findings, and supported the theories of the Alexandrian physician Erasistratus.
Prior to Colombo’s work, anatomists such as Galen and Vesalius examined blood vessels separately from the organs of the body.
[6] Colombo put an emphasis on vivisection, the practice of experimentation or scientific research on live animals, in order to learn about the different bodily functions of the human body.
According to Colombo’s book, “De Re Anatomica Libri XV,” he put energy into dissecting, in particular the cadavers of men.
Colombo’s concentration on vivisection revived the practice of ancient Alexandrian anatomists, using live animals instead of dead, which led him to adopting this new way of conceptualizing the body.
[7][8] The permeability of the septum was questioned by Michael Servetus in Christianismi Restitutio in 1553 and by Ibn al-Nafis in the 13th century and both proposed that the blood was pushed from the right ventricle to the left via the lungs, however, both of these accounts were largely forgotten.
In addition to the pulmonary circuit, Colombo also discovered that the main action of the heart was contraction, rather than dilation as had previously been thought.
It was this severing of the conceptual link between the lungs and the heart that had existed since the time of Galen that made Colombo’s discovery of the pulmonary transit of blood possible.
[2] Federico Andahazi's 1997 novel El anatomista ("The Anatomist") compares Colombo to Christopher Columbus, drawing parallels between the discovery of the clitoris and of the New World.
