Alberti, Salomon

(b. Naumburg, Germany, October 1540; d. Dresden, Germany, 29 March 1600)

medicine.

Although he is usually associated with Nuremberg, where his family moved in 1541 and where he received his elementary education, Alberti studied medicine at Wittenberg (M.D., 1574) and taught in the medical faculty there for many years. He was chiefly interested in anatomy. As early as 1579, he began public demonstrations of the venous valves; his study of these valves was his most noteworthy achievement. A knowledge of the venous valves was essential to the formation of Harvey’s concept of a systemic circulation of the blood, fifty years later. First referred to in 1546, they were apparently forgotten after about 1560; they were rediscovered in 1574 by Girolamo Fabrizio (Fabrizio d’Acquapendente) at Padua. Although Alberti acknowledged his indebtedness to Fabrizio for rediscovery of these valves, he deserves recognition as being the first to provide illustrations of venous valves in his Tres orations (Nuremberg, 1585), which also included the first extensive printed account devoted solely to their structure.

Alberti also studied and described the lacrimal apparatus (De lacrimis, Wittenberg, 1581), as well as such then curious but rational problems as why boys ought not to be forbidden to cry, why sobbing usually accompanies weeping, and whether asthma might be ameliorated by breathing the fumes of various minerals burned on coals (Orationes quatuor, Wittenberg, 1590). In addition, he provided an extended account of the ileocecal valve, or Bauhin’s valve (mentioned by Mondino in 1316 and described briefly by Laguna in 1535), the cochlea (described in detail by Fallopio in 1561). and, as an original contribution, the renal papillae. (See Orationes duae, Wittenberg, 1575–1576; and Historia plerarunque partium humani corporis, a textbook for medical students, Wittenber, 1583, and later editions.) Alberti discussed the problem of deafness and muteness in Oratio de surditate et mutilate (Nuremberg, 1591). He emphasized the difference between hardness of hearing and deafness, which latter condition he considered as possibly being caused by a defect in the development of the fetus.

In 1592 Alberti became physician to Duke Friedrich Wilhelm of Saxony. A year earlier, his interest in the problem of scurvy had led to the treatise De schorbuto (Wittenberg, 1591). Alberti made a survey of the incidence of the deficiency disease in the ducal territory, and the result was his Schorbuti historia (Wittenberg, 1594), which for the most part is of no great significance except for the most part is of no prevalence of the complaint and the recommendation of citrus fruit as part of a preventive diet. The book was known by James Lind and referred to by him in his celebrated treatise of 1753.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

For bibliographies of Alberti’s writings see Georg Andreas Will. Nürnbergisches Gelehrten-Lexicon, 1 (Nuremberg, 1755); and Claudius F. Mayer, “Bio-bibliography of XVI. Century Medical Authors. Fasciculus 1, Abarbanel-Alberti, S.,” in Index Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon General’s Library, ser. 4, 3rd supp. (Washington, D.C., 1941), which contains an exhaustive list but without indication of imprint. See also Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, The Sixteenth Century, VI (New York, 1941), 229–230.

C. D. O’Malley