Alessandro Achillini

Alessandro Achillini (Latin: Alexander Achillinus; 20 or 29 October 1463 – 2 August 1512) was an Italian philosopher and physician. He is known for the anatomic studies that he was able to publish, made possible by a 13th-century edict putatively by Emperor Frederick II allowing for dissection of human cadavers, and which previously had stimulated the anatomist Mondino de Luzzi (c. 1270 – 1326) at Bologna. Achillini was born in Bologna and lived the majority of his life there. He was the son of Claudio Achillini, member of an old family of Bologna. He was celebrated as a lecturer both in medicine and in philosophy at Bologna and Padua, and was styled the second Aristotle. He was of a very simplistic nature. He was unskilled in the arts of adulation and double-dealing to such a degree that his most witty and imprudent students often regarded him as an object of ridicule, even though they honored him as a teacher. He also possessed quite a lively disposition. According to a colleague's description, he was handsome, tall but well proportioned, cheerful, happy, often smiling, and affable. Achillini never married. His reputation among his colleagues was admirable and he was highly respected. And although Achillini was well-read and formidable in debate, he was said to be somewhat rigid and stiff in his lecturing. After his death, many people were extremely devastated. His philosophical works were printed in one volume folio, at Venice, in 1508, and reprinted with considerable additions in 1545, 1551 and 1568. He died in Bologna on 2 August 1512 and was buried the following day in the church of San Martino. Among his notable discoveries, he is known as the first anatomist to describe the two tympanal bones of the ear, termed malleus and incus. In 1503 he showed that the tarsus (middle part of the foot) consists of seven bones, he rediscovered the fornix and the infundibulum of the brain. He also described the ducts of the submaxillary salivary glands. His brother was the author Giovanni Filoteo Achillini, and his grandnephew, Claudio Achillini (1572-1640), was a lawyer. In 1506, he was obliged to leave Bologna owing to the expulsion of the powerful Bentivoglio family of whom he was a partisan. He then went to Padua where he was appointed teacher of philosophy.