Guidi, Guido [Vidius]
(1508-1569)
De anatome corporis humani libri VII.
Venetiis, apud Juntas, 1611.
"Guidi, discovered the Vidian nerve, the Vidian canal, and the Vidian artery. The above was edited by his nephew"(Morton's Medical Bibliography, Fifth Edition, Edited by Jeremy M. Norman).
"He also made original studies of the mechanism of articulation in the human body resulting from its vertical position in relation to the mechanism of quadruped articulations. It also appears that Guidi elaborated and improved upon various devices in Hippocrates for setting fractures and reducing dislocations. After becoming a doctor of medicine, he practiced in Rome and Florence. In 1542 he went to Paris, where he was named royal physician and became the first professor of medicine at the College Royal..He left Paris in 1647 upon the death of Francis I and became professor of philosophy and medicine at the University of Pisa in 1548 and physician to Cosimo I de'Medici. He became a priest and was given ecclesiastical benefices, including the rectorship of Pescia" (The Galileo Project).
"In his Chirurgia of 1544 Guidi presents himself above all as a humanist anxious for the faithful restoration of classical knowledge. On the other hand, the Anatomia is the work of a scientist fully conscious of the Vesalian revolution and seeking his inspiration from nature. Unfortunately, this treatise was printed, under the title De anatome corporis humani, in a posthumous edition with hideous illustrations and maladroit additions by Guido Guidi, Jr., Guidi's nephew. This explains the negative judgments of several historians of medicine and their claims that Guidi plagiarized Vesalius and Falloppio. In his writing on practical medicine Guidi remained within classical Galenism. Nevertheless, this conservatism did not prevent him from describing a new childhood disease (chicken pox) or from inventing an original method for tracheotomy" (Dictionary of Scientific Biography).
Source: The Clendening History of Medicine Library and Museum
Armamentarium chirurgicum bipartitum
1666
The first five images depict the tracheotomy procedure. Between 1500 and 1833, there are reports of only twenty-eight successful tracheotomies.
Source: The National Library of Medicine
