Background
Gaspard Bauhin was born on January 17, 1560, in Basel, Switzerland. He was the son of a French physician, Jean Bauhin, who had to leave his native country on becoming a convert to Protestantism.
1623
Gaspard Bauhin (1560–1624). Pinax Theatri Botanici.
Portrait of Caspar Bauhin
Caspar Bauhin. Lithograph by N. E. Maurin.
Portrait of Caspar Bauhin
Engraving of Gaspard Bauhin, drawn and engraved by Ambroise Tardieu.
Portrait of Caspar Bauhin, copperplate engraving by Peter Aubry.
Portrait of Caspar Bauhin
University of Basel, Basel, Basel-City, Switzerland
In 1572 Gaspard entered the University of Basel, where Felix Plater and Theodore Zwinger were among his teachers. He received the degree of Bachelor of Philosophy in 1575.
Caspar Bauhin (1623), Pinax Theatri Botanici, page 291. On this page, a number of Tithymalus species (now Euphorbia) is listed, described and provided with synonyms and references. Bauhin already used binomial names but did not consistently give all species throughout the work binomials.
Caspar Bauhin, Prodromoc theatri botanici (Basle, 1671), p. 92, Hyoscyamus.
Caspar Bauhin, Prodromoc theatri botanici (Basle, 1671), p. 37, Rapistrum monospermon.
Caspar Bauhin, Prodromoc theatri botanici (Basle, 1671), p. 47, Thlaspi.
anatomist Botanist physician scientist
Gaspard Bauhin was born on January 17, 1560, in Basel, Switzerland. He was the son of a French physician, Jean Bauhin, who had to leave his native country on becoming a convert to Protestantism.
From childhood, Bauhin was taught anatomy by his father and botany by his brother Jean (almost twenty years his senior), who became a botanist of some repute. In 1572 Gaspard entered the University of Basel, where Felix Plater and Theodore Zwinger were among his teachers. He received the degree of Bachelor of Philosophy in 1575, and conducted his first medical disputation in 1577.
In October of that year he went to Padua, where for eighteen months he studied anatomy with Girolamo Fabrizio (Fabricius ab Aquapendente), saw seven bodies dissected, “and even assisted myself in the private dissections.” He also attended the teaching of Marco de Oddi and Emilio Campolongo at the Hospital of St. Francis, and probably that of Melchior Wieland (Guillandinus) in the botanical garden.
At some time during this period, he visited Bologna and received instruction in anatomy from Giulio Cesare Aranzio. In the spring of 1579, he signed the register of the University of Montpellier, but by his own account he spent more time in Paris attending the anatomies conducted by Sévérin Pineau, professor of anatomy and surgery, “whom I assisted in dissecting at his request.” Returning to Basel in 1580, he was admitted to the degree of doctor, and gave private lectures in botany and anatomy.
In May 1580 Bauhin was in Tübingen. Early the following year he returned to Basel, where “at the urgent request of the College of Physicians, I began to dissect bodies.” He held his first public anatomy on 27 February. The disputation for his doctor’s degree took place on 19 April and had as its subject De dolore colico. He received the doctorate on 2 May, and on 13 May he was made a member of the Faculty of Medicine.
In April 1582 Bauhin was made a professor of Greek; two years later he became consiliarius in the Faculty of Medicine, an office he held until his death. He was dean of the faculty nine times (beginning in 1586), and four times rector of the university (1592, 1598, 1611, 1619). Despite his professorship of Greek, he continued to teach both anatomy and botany, holding public anatomies in the winter and taking the students on botanical expeditions in the summer.
As a result of his efforts, work was begun on a permanent theater for anatomical demonstrations, and a botanical garden was laid out. In September 1589 he was rewarded by the creation of a special chair in anatomy and botany. During these years Bauhin’s private medical practice grew, and in 1597 he was associated with his brother Jean as physician to Duke Frederick of Württemberg. From 1588 on, he was occupied with the writing and publishing of a series of books on anatomy. His first major botanical work was Phytopinax (1596). When his Pinax appeared in 1623, it was said to be the result of forty years’ work.
On the death of Felix Plater in 1614, Bauhin succeeded him as archiater (chief physician of a monarch) to the city of Basel. The following year he was appointed a professor of the practice of medicine. In 1658 Jean Gaspard published the first volume, all that was ever published of the intended twelve, of his father’s Theatrum botanicum.
No great anatomical discoveries can be ascribed to Bauhin. He himself believed that he was the first to describe the ileocecal valve, which was long known as the valvula Bauhini; and in a number of his anatomical writings, he gives an account of how he first found it during a private dissection that he performed as a student in Paris in 1579.
There is no doubt that Bauhin’s contribution as a teacher of anatomy was considerable, particularly through his many books on the subject. His first textbook was De corporis humani partibus externis (1588), written at the request of his students after the public anatomy he had given two years before. It was intended to be a succinct, methodical account of the external parts of the body suitable for beginners and to be used in conjunction with the Tabulae of Vesalius.
The second volume, dealing with “similar and spermatic” parts, was published in 1592. Meanwhile, in 1590, Bauhin published his first complete textbook, De corporis humanifabrica. It was a systematic account written from the point of view of dissection and intended for students rather than professors of anatomy. It respected ancient findings and theories but did not hesitate to correct them when the results of actual dissections made it necessary. Its appearance provoked a storm of abuse from the Galenists.
Corrected and enlarged by a description of the female anatomy, it was republished in 1597 as Anatómica corporis virilis et muliebris historia. In 1605 all these anatomical writings were brought together, revised and enlarged, and published in Bauhin’s most celebrated anatomical textbook, Theatrum anatomicum, which was accompanied by copper engravings based on the drawings of Vesalius and entitled Vivae imagines partium corporis. The Theatrum anatomicum soon acquired the reputation of being the best anatomical textbook available. It was systematic, gave adequate consideration to the ancient authorities, did not go into too much detail over the controversies, had a series of eminently useful footnotes, and mentioned anatomical anomalies and pathological findings. Its illustrations, although poor in comparison with those of Vesalius, were adequate for anyone using the book to accompany an actual dissection. It was this work that William Harvey chose as the basis for his Lumleian Lectures to the College of Physicians in London in 1616. It was translated into English in 1615 by Helkiah Crooke and, conflated with the textbook of Laurentius, was published under the title of Microcosmographia, A Study of the Body of Man.
Although Bauhin said that his anatomical works contained few novelties, he did include new anatomical findings that were obviously true, for he believed firmly that truth demonstrable to the beholder outweighs the opinions of the authorities. In this way, in his Libri lili of 1590 he included a description of the valves in the veins, as demonstrated sixteen years previously by Girolamo Fabrizio in Padua. (Fabrizio’s own account was not published until 1603.) In the same work he pointed out that there was no need to suppose the existence of pores in the interventricular septum of the heart, for the venous blood could more easily go to the lungs from the right ventricle through the pulmonary artery, there be refined and mixed with air, and return to the left ventricle through the pulmonary vein.
Bauhin’s medical works include treatises on the bezoar stone, on Caesarean section, on hermaphrodites and other monstrous births, and on the pulse. His two pharmacological writings are designed as handbooks for young physicians. As in anatomy, Bauhin’s great contribution to botany was to nomenclature. He was primarily a taxonomist, concerned with the collecting and classifying of a great variety of plants. His botanical fame rests chiefly on two works, Prodromos ( 1620) and Pinax (1623).
He made little or no progress in classifying the genera into orders and classes. Although the system was not his invention, he vastly improved it, and thereafter it was generally adopted. His botanical work was commemorated by L. P. C. Plumier, who gave the name Bauhinia to a family of tropical trees; and Linnaeus, in memory of both Gaspard and his brother Jean, called one species of this family Bauhinia bijuga.
Although in a final assessment of his work in botany and anatomy it can be said that little was truly original, Bauhin’s influence in both fields lasted for well over a century. His great merit was his ability to treat his subjects in an orderly and methodical manner, for he had a capacity to think clearly and an ability to work without tiring.
In his religious affiliation, Gaspard Bauhin was a Protestant.
Because it is very easy to make mistakes in the enumeration of muscles if they are merely called first, second, third, etc., and because different anatomists had named different muscles in this way, not agreeing on the order of the enumeration, Bauhin decided that it was better to use another kind of terminology.
He, therefore, named some muscles according to their substance (semimembranosus), others according to their shape (deltoid, scalene, etc.), some according to their origin (arytenoideus), and others according to their origin and insertion (styloglossus, crycothyroideus). Some he named according to the number of their heads (biceps, triceps), some according to their amount (vastus, gracilis), some according to their position (pectoralis), and others according to their use (supinator, pronator, etc.).
He also decided that veins and arteries should be named according to their use or course, and nerves according to their function. The system had so many obvious advantages over the old method that it was adopted by all subsequent anatomists.
Quiet and reserved, he can be remembered in William Harvey’s words concerning him: “a rare industrious man.”
Bauhin was married three times; in 1581 to Barbara Vogelmann of Montbéliard, by whom he had one daughter; in 1596 to Maria Bruggler of Bern; and sometime after 1597 to Magdalena Burckhardt, by whom he had two daughters and one son, Jean Gaspard, who succeeded his father as professor of anatomy and botany in 1629 and became professor of the practice of medicine in 1660.