Eustachius, Bartholomew

, one of the most celebrated anatomists of the sixteenth century, was a native of San Severino, a village in Italy. He was educated at Rome, where he first conceived a bias in favour of medicine, and especially of anatomy, and cultivated the latter with such success, that he was appointed to the professor’s chair in that college. His life probably passed in the quiet pursuit | of his studies and exercise of his profession, as no other events are on record concerning him. He died at Home in 1574. Eustachius was the author of several works, the greater part of which are lost. His treatise “De Controversiis Anatomicorum,” which was one of the most considerable of his productions, is much regretted. His opuscula which remain appeared under the following titles, “Opuscula Anatomica, nempe de Renum structura, officio, et administratione de auditus organo ossium examen de mom capitis de vena quae azygos dicitur, et de alia, quae in flexn brachii communem profundam producit de dentibus,” Venet. 1563, and again in 1674, with the notes of Pinus. An edition was also published at Leyden, in 1707, under the superintendance of Boerhaave. He has the merit of several discoveries in anatomy; being the tirst who described the renal capsules, the thoracic duct, and the passage leading from the throat to the internal ear, which is still called from him the Eustachian tube. A series of figures engraved on copper were mentioned in his “Opuscula” as nearly finished; but they were not discovered until 1714, when they were published at Rome by Lancisi, physician to pope Clement XL in one volume, folio. These plates were again published, but not well printed, at Geneva in 1717. The edition of Rome in 1728 is excellent; but the one published at the same city in 1740, by Petrioli, is less valuable. The same work was twice published at Leyden, under the direction of Albinus, viz. in 1744 and 1762. Eustachius edited the lexicon of Erotran at Venice in 1666, under the title of “Erotiani, Graeci scriptoris vetustissimi, vocum, quae apud Hippocratem sunt, collectio, cum annotatiombus Eustachii,” in quarto. 1