Fabricius

Fabricius, or FABRIZIO, GIROLAMO, commonly called of Acquapendente, from the place of his birth, near Orvieto, a celebrated anatomist and surgeon, was born in 1537. He was the son of humble parents, who notwithstanding their poverty sent him to the university of Padua, where he studied anatomy and surgery under Fallopius. On the death of the latter in 1562 Fabricius was appointed to the vacant professorship, a post which he continued to hold for nearly half a century. Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, was one of his pupils. Fabricius died at Padua, 21st May 1619. He was a laborious investigator, treated the eye, the larynx, the ear, the intestinal canal, the development of the fetus, and—his chief claim to remembrance—discovered the valves of the veins in 1574. See his Opera Chirurgica (1617).—DAVID FABRICIUS (1564–1603) was a pastor at Resterhaave and at Ostseel in East Friesland, and discovered several new stars.—His son, JOANNES (1587–1615), was a doctor of medicine, famous in astronomy as having discovered the spots on the sun (1610) and the sun's revolution.—JOANNES ALBERTUS FABRICIUS (1668–1738), bibliographer, was born at Leipzig, studied theology and philology there, but spent most of his life as teacher and rector in a gymnasium at Hamburg. He may be regarded as the modern founder of the history of classical literature and bibliography in virtue of his Bibliotheca Latina (3 vols. 1697), Bibliotheca Græca (14 vols. 1705–28), Bibliotheca Latina Media et Infimæ Ætatis (5 vols. 1734–36), Bibliographia Antiquaria (1713), and Bibliotheca Ecclesiastica (1718). See the monograph by Reimarus (1737).—JOHANNES CHRISTIAN FABRICIUS, entomologist, was born at Tondern in Sleswick, January 7, 1745, and died at Kiel, 3d March 1808. At Upsala he worked under Linnæus, and in 1775 he was appointed to the chair of natural history at Kiel. His classification of insects, based upon the structure of the mouth, is expounded in his Systema Entomologiæ (1775), Genera Insectorum (1776), Philosophia Entomologica (1778), Mantissa Insectorum (1787), and Entomologia Systematica (1792).