Gabriele Falloppio (1523 - 1562)

Gabriele Falloppio

Gabriele Falloppio was an Italian physician and anatomist of the Renaissance.

Originally a priest, Falloppio soon left for Ferrara to study medicine and was later appointed anatomy professor there, and in 1548 he became head of the anatomy department at Pisa. Three years later he accepted the offer of the Venetian Senate to become professor of anatomy, surgery, and botany at Padua, where he remained for the rest of his life. It was in this city that he made his most famous discoveries, was director of the famous botanical garden, and wrote two medical textbooks.

He also gained a reputation as an excellent teacher and lecturer, attracting many Italian and foreign students to the medical faculty of the University of Padua. As a physician, he made a thorough study of the clinical aspects and treatment of syphilis, and proposed the condom as a defense against venereal disease.

Falloppio was a versatile scientist and an able physician and surgeon, describing, among other things, the semicircular canals, the cuneiform sinuses, the trigeminal, auditory and lingual pharyngeal nerves, the canal of the facial nerve, and the fallopian tubes, named Fallopian tubes in his honor. Falloppio described his discoveries in his three-volume work Opera genuina omnia, published in Frankfurt in 1600 and in Venice in 1606.