Niccolò Massa

Niccolò Massa ( Latinized Nicolaus Massa ; born March 14, 1489 in Venice , † August 27, 1569 in Venice) was an Italian doctor and anatomist .

Live and act

Massa received his doctorate in Padua and taught and worked as a doctor and professor in his home city of Venice until his death. In the years 1526 to 1533 he carried out numerous sections that formed the starting point for important observations and hints in his Introduction to Anatomy ( Liber introductorius anatomiae ) published in 1536 . Among other things, he discovered the origin of the olfactory nerve , several facial muscles and the genioglossus muscle , gave the first more precise description of the prostate and the peritoneum and, contrary to a prevailing doctrine of the time, defended the empirical finding that the uterus is not divided into seven chambers.

His writings on plague fever and syphilis were also influential . He located the origin of syphilis in the liver ; with regard to the transmission routes , he assumed that these were not necessarily limited to sexual contact ( per contagionem coiti , per pudendas partes ). He already recommended mercury and the resin of the guaiac tree as remedies . He was the first to recognize the connection between syphilitic infection and the neurological-psychiatric symptoms of neurolues .

When, after the death of the Avicenna translator Andrea Alpago († 1520), an Arabic manuscript of the Avicenna biography by his student Al-Juzdschani (Latin Sorsanus) was found in his estate and Alpago's nephew and heir Paolo Alpago turned to Niccolò Massa He had the text translated into Italian ("versione vulgari") by an interpreter named Marcus Fadella, apparently baptized for Venetian merchants in Damascus, and then created his own Latin translation. This has been regularly added to the Latin Avicenna editions since the great Avicenna edition by Benedetto Rinio (* around 1485; † 1565) and remained the most important source for knowledge of Avicenna's biography in the western world until the 19th century.

Fonts

• Liber de morbo neapolitani (or de morbo gallico ). Venice 1527, several new editions, u. a. Lyon: Barthélemi Trot, 1534 ( digitized from Google Books, last accessed February 24, 2007) and in Joseph Tectander (Ed.), Morbi Gallici curandi ratio exquisitissima , Basel: Johann Bebel, 1536 ( digitized from Google Books, last accessed 24. February 2007); Ital. Il libro del mal francese, composto dall'eccell. medico, & filosofo M. Nicolo Massa venetiano. nuouamente tradotto da un dottissimo medico, di latino, nella nostralingua italiana , Venice: Giordano Ziletti, 1566
• Liber introductorius anatomiae . Venice: rancesco Bindoni and Maffeo Pasini, November 1536 ( digitized from Google Books, last accessed February 24, 2007)
• Liber de febre pestilentiali, ac de pestichiis, morbillis, variolis, & apostematibus pestilentialibus , Venice: Francesco Bindoni and Maffeo Pasini, 1540
• Principis Avicennae vita ex Sorsano Arabe eius discipulo a Nicolao Massa, philosopho et medico, latinitate donata . Ed. By Konrad Goehl , Die Vita Avicennae des Sorsanus or al-Dschusadschani, Latin and German , in: Konrad Goehl and Johannes Gottfried Mayer (ed.), Editions and studies on Latin and German specialist prose of the Middle Ages: Festgabe für Gundolf Keil , Verlag Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 2000 (= Texts and Knowledge, 3; ISBN 3-8260-1851-6 ), pp. 317–337
• Sopra le infermita, che vengono dall'aere pestilentiale del presente anno 1555 . Venice: Giovanni Griffio, commissioned by Giordano Ziletti, 1556
• De venae sectione et sanguinis missione in febribus ex humorum putredine ortis, ac in aliis praeter naturam adfectibus , Venice: Andrea Arrivabene, 1556; Venice: Giordano Ziletti, 1568
• Epistolae medicinales, et philosophicae, elegantissimae ad omnes fere morbos nuperrime editae , Venice: Francesco Bindoni and Maffeo Pasini, 1550, again in: Epistolae medicinales diversorum authorum , Lyon: G. Giunta Erben, 1557, pp. 233-320

literature

• Levi Robert Lind: Studies in Pre-Vesalian Anatomy: Biography, Translations, Documents . American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia 1975, ISBN 0-87169-104-3
• Luciano Sterpellone: I protagonisti della medicina , Piccin, Padua 1983, ISBN 88-299-0037-0 , p. 243
• Lisa Roscioni:  Massa, Niccolò. In: Mario Caravale (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 71:  Marsilli – Massimino da Salerno. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 2008.
• Konrad Goehl : The Vita Avicennae of Sorsanus or al-Jusadschani, Latin and German. In: Konrad Goehl and Johannes Gottfried Mayer (eds.): Editions and studies on Latin and German specialist prose of the Middle Ages: Festgabe für Gundolf Keil. Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 2000, ISBN 3-8260-1851-6 (= Texts and Knowledge, Volume 3), pp. 317–337; here: pp. 317-320 and 327.