Giulio Cesare Casseri (1552 – 8 March 1616), also written as Giulio Casser, Giulio Casserio of Piacenza or Latinized as Iulius Casserius Placentinus, Giulio Casserio, was an Italian anatomist. He is best known for the books ''Tabulae anatomicae'' (1627) ''and'' ''De Vocis Auditusque Organis'' (c. 1600). He was the first to describe the
Circle of Willis.
Biography
Born in
Piacenza, he moved to
Padua as a young man, when he became a servant to the great anatomist
Hieronymus Fabricius. He studied at the School of Medicine of the University, where his teachers included
Girolamo Mercuriale
Girolamo Mercuriale or Mercuriali ( it, Geronimo Mercuriali; la, Hieronymus Mercurialis, Hyeronimus Mercurialis) (September 30, 1530 – November 8, 1606) was an Italian philologist and physician, most famous for his work ''De Arte Gymnastica''. ...
, who was Chair of Clinical Medicine in Padua from 1580-87. Casseri fell out with Fabricius, initially it seems as Fabricius resented the enthusiasm of the students for Casseri's teaching when Fabricius was ill.
He wrote ''Tabulae anatomicae'', probably the most important anatomical treatise in the seventeenth century, published in Venice, in 1627. The book contained 97 copper-engraved pictures, by Francesco Valesio, inspired by
Odoardo Fialetti, Italian painter and former student at
Titian's school. The pictures in this book were copied in the works of his successor at Padua,
Adriaan van den Spiegel (1578–1625). His ''De vocis auditusque organis historia anatomica'' was published in 1600-1 in
Ferrara
Ferrara (, ; egl, Fràra ) is a city and ''comune'' in Emilia-Romagna, northern Italy, capital of the Province of Ferrara. it had 132,009 inhabitants. It is situated northeast of Bologna, on the Po di Volano, a branch channel of the main stream ...
. In this work, he was the first to illustrate the use of tymbals in the production of sound by
cicadas. He died in Padua.
The historian of comparative anatomy,
F. J. Cole considered Casserius as one of the oldest exponents of comparative anatomy by examining and illustrating anatomical analogues of man in other animals. He described the arterial circle of the brain 37 years before the work of Thomas Willis after whom is named the Circle of Willis.
Related eponyms
* Casser fontanelle (
mastoid fontanelle)
* Casser perforated muscle (
coracobrachialis muscle)
References
Other sources
*
* Bourgery, J. M. & Jacob, N. H.: ''Atlas of Human Anatomy and Surgery''; Paris, 2005
* Housman, Brian, Bellary, Sharath, Hansra, Simrat, Mortazavi, Martin, Tubbs, R. Shane & Marios Loukas Giulio Cesare Casseri (c. 1552–1616): The servant who became an anatomist. Clinical Anatomy, 2014, Vol.27(5), pp. 675–68
* Weir, Neil, Otolaryngology : an illustrated history. Butterworths, London, 1990.
*
External links
Tabulae anatomicae LXXIIXDe vocis auditusque organis historia anatomica
{{DEFAULTSORT:Casseri, Giulio Cesare
1552 births
1616 deaths
Italian anatomists
People from Piacenza