The surgeon who brought brain anatomy to the agenda of the Renaissance: Who is Giulio Cesare Aranzi?

(1530-1589) (Julius Caesar Arantius) Italian anatomist and surgeon. He is one of the Renaissance physicians who made important studies on the circulatory system and the anatomy of the brain.

Julius Caesar Aranzi (Giulio Cesare Aranzio, Arantius) (1529/1530 – April 7, 1589) was a leading figure in the history of the science of human anatomy.

Little is known about the life of Giulio Aranzi, whose surname is given as Aranzio in some sources, and who published his works under the Latin name Arantius, following the tradition of the age. It is known that he was born in Bologna, received his doctorate from the University of Bologna in 1556 and was appointed to the chair of medicine and surgery the following year, and died in Bologna on April 7, 1589. However, the information that he was a student of Vesalius, one of the great anatomists of the Renaissance, is not certain.

Aranzi began studying anatomy at a very young age, discovering the upper eyelid lifter muscle when he was just 19 years old. He soon focused his attention and research on blood circulation. Until the publication of Harvey's De motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus (1628) ("On the Movement of the Heart and Blood in Living Things"), which accurately and in detail describes the circulation of the large and small blood, this was the main concern of all anatomical scholars of that age. Aranzi, who was especially interested in life in the fetal stage during his primary education and research years at the University of Bologna, examined the structure of the ethene (placenta) and the womb during pregnancy, and the blood circulation of the fetus. compiled in his work. The canal on the lower surface of the liver, which Aranzi describes in this work, connects the left branch of the fetal-gate vein and the inferior main vein and closes after birth, is known as the "Arantius vein canal".

Continuing his studies on blood circulation, Aranzi describes the small, wire nodules (Arantius) at the free ends of the sigma valves, which close the main artery (aorta) passage between the left atrium and left ventricle of the heart and the pulmonary artery passage between the right atrium and the right ventricle, thus preventing the return of blood to the ventricles after contraction. nodes) defined. Aranzi was also the first to explain the existence of an arterial duct (ductus arteriosus) in the fetus that connects the pulmonary artery and the aorta and normally closes spontaneously within the first week or two following birth. Since the Italian physician Leonardo Botallo (1530-1570) worked on the same subject later on, the fact that this canal, which is mistakenly referred to as Botallo in some sources, does not close after birth is an important malformation that results in death by mixing clean blood with dirty blood.

Perhaps the most important discovery of Aranzi, which clarified blood circulation, was his proof that the chamber between the right and left ventricles of the heart is impermeable. In the 2nd century, Galenos suggested that there were small pores in the chamber separating the two ventricles of the heart and that blood passed from the right ventricle to the left ventricle through these pores. This view, also supported by Vesalius, remained valid in the Western world for about 1400 years. Aranzi, who was skeptical of the existence of these pores, like many anatomy scholars in the 1550s, proved the impermeability of the interventricular compartment by working on the ventricles of the heart with Colombo. Later, Colombo and Servetus working on the same subject, starting from their joint work with Aranzi, probably benefited from the work of the 13th-century Arab physician İbnünnefis, who described the small circulation two centuries before them, and the blood passage from the right ventricle to the left ventricle via the lungs. and confirmed Aranzi's discovery.

Aranzi, who also examined the anatomy of the brain, identified the brain cistern (cisterna cere-bellomedullaris) filled with cerebrospinal fluid, located in the lower posterior part of the skull, between the lower surface of the cerebellum and the upper surface of the medulla, the fourth ventricle of the brain, the pedes hippocampus in the rhinencephalon, the center of the sense of smell. you defined. Aranzi, who collected all his research on the anatomy of the brain and heart in his work Observatiores anatomicae (“Observations of Anatomy”), was a good surgeon as well as a successful observer. His work titled De tumoribm secundun locus affectum, published in 1571 is devoted to surgery and gives an idea of the quality of Aranzi's surgical courses at the University of Bologna. It is thought that it was the Italian surgeon Gaspare Tagliacozzo (15451599) who introduced the rhinoplasty technique, which Indian surgeons performed by grafting pieces of skin removed from the arm into the nasal tissue, to Western medicine 600 years before Christ. However, one of Aranzi's students writes in a review article that his teacher applied plastic nose surgery before Taglia-cozzo and witnessed several times that he performed very successful nose surgeries on patients with syphilis using the skin of the arm. Although Aranzi never mentioned such an operation in his work, he made important contributions to the development of medicine with his studies in both surgery and anatomy.