Jean Fernel Information & Jean Fernel Links at HealthHaven.com

Jean Fernel

Jean François Fernel (in Latin, Fernelius) (Montdidier 1497–Fontainebleau 1558) was a French physician who introduced the term "physiology" to describe the study of the body's function. He was the first person to describe the spinal canal. The lunar crater Fernelius is named after him.

In the 1500s, Fernel suggested that fat could trigger human taste buds, but scientists rejected the idea until a recent study (carried out by Purdue University in 2001) proved it plausible.

He was born at Montdidier, and after receiving his early education at his native town, entered the College of Sainte-Barbe, Paris. At first he devoted himself to mathematical and astronomical studies; his Cosmotheoria (1528) records a determination of a degree of the meridian, which he made by counting the revolutions of his carriage wheels on a journey between Paris and Amiens.

His works on mathematical and astronomical subjects also include Monalosphaerium(1526), and De proportionibus (1528).

But from 1534 he gave himself up entirely to medicine, in which he graduated in 1530. His extraordinary general erudition, and the skill and success with which he sought to revive the study of the old Greek physicians, gained him a great reputation, and ultimately the office of physician to the court. He practised with great success, and at his death in 1558 left behind him an immense fortune.

His medical works include: De naturali parte medicinae (1542), De vacuandi ratione (1545), De abditis rerum causis (1548), and what has been called his "crowning work"^[1], Universa Medicina, comprising three parts, the Physiologia (developed from the De naturali parte), the Pathologia, and the Therapeutice.