Professor Lorenz Heister (1683-1758), His Discovery of Appendicitis and Other Innovations in Surgery.

BACKROUND: Professor Lorenz Heister (1683-1758) is considered as one of the most significant surgeons of the Deutschland area, named as the father of Surgical Anatomy in Germany. PURPORSE: He was a reputable Professor who taught a great number of Deutsch and foreign medical students. He was a prolific writer whose treatises received many editions being translated in the most important languages of his era. His texts books became reference works for the European Universities and Japanese physicians and surgeons. ANALYSIS/RESULTS: He had discovered and scientifically described the appendicitis, while he was coined with the term tracheotomy. CONCLUSIONS: He had made several surgical innovations and demonstrated novel techniques and anatomical entities of the human body in his atlases.

The Hyoid Bone - the Anatomy of a Small Bone of the Neck in Hellenic and Greco-Roman Medical Literature.

OBJECTIVES: To understand the nomenclature of the hyoid bone. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Hyoid, a small bone of the neck, is a bony part that is rather difficult to unearth and discover among skeletal remains. RESULTS: The named was coined by the ancient Greeks, along with its anatomic description. Galen (2nd - 3rd c. AD) and Theophilus Protospatharius (7th century AD), facing religious and social barriers, succeeded in presenting its anatomy and suggesting its probable function in speech and swallowing, regarding the bone as a muscle pillar of the neck area. CONCLUSION: Authorities of Hellenic antiquity surprise us with their accuracy and the resilience of their anatomical descriptions.