Fabricius, Hieronymus (hīərŏn`əməs), 1537–1619, Italian anatomist; pupil and successor of Fallopius and teacher of William Harvey at Padua. He was a surgeon, an embryologist, and an anatomist; he described the venous valves but did not fully understand their function.

Bibliography

See his De venarum ostiolis (1603; facsimile ed., with introduction by K. J. Franklin, 1933).

Fabricius (ab Aquapendente), Hieronymus

Italian Girolamo Fabrici

(born May 20, 1537, Acquapendente, Italy—died May 21, 1619, Padua) Italian surgeon and anatomist. He studied under and later succeeded Gabriel Fallopius at the University of Padua (1562–1613). The first clear description of the valves of the veins, in his De venarum ostiolis (1603), provided his pupil William Harvey with a crucial point in his argument for blood circulation. His De formato foetu (1600) contained the first detailed description of the placenta and opened the field of comparative embryology. He was the first to perceive the larynx as a vocal organ and to demonstrate that the pupil of the eye changes size.