Charles Estienne (; 1504–1564), known as Carolus Stephanus in

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

and Charles Stephens in English, was an early exponent of the

science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

anatomy Anatomy () is the branch of morphology concerned with the study of the internal structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old scien ...

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

. Charles was a younger brother of Robert Estienne I, the famous printer, and son to Henri, who Latinized the family name as . He married Geneviève de Berly. After the usual humanistic training he studied medicine, and took his doctor's degree at

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

. He was for a time tutor to Jean-Antoine de Baïf, the future poet. It is uncertain whether he taught publicly. His career was interrupted by the oppressive

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s in which their

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opinions involved the family. Éstienne, though from a family whose classical taste was their principal glory, did not betray the same servile imitation of the

Galen Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus (; September 129 – AD), often Anglicization, anglicized as Galen () or Galen of Pergamon, was a Ancient Rome, Roman and Greeks, Greek physician, surgeon, and Philosophy, philosopher. Considered to be one o ...

ian anatomy as his contemporary,

Jacques Dubois Jacques Dubois ( Latinised as Jacobus Sylvius; 1478 – 14 January 1555) was a French anatomist. Dubois was the first to describe venous valves, although their function was later discovered by William Harvey. He was the brother of Franciscus Sy ...

. He appears to have been the first to detect valves in the orifice of the

hepatic vein In human anatomy, the hepatic veins are the veins that drain venous blood from the liver into the inferior vena cava (as opposed to the hepatic portal vein which conveys blood from the gastrointestinal organs to the liver). There are usually thre ...

s, though his description was vague. He was ignorant, however, of the researches of the

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anatomists; and his description of the

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is inferior to that given sixty years before by

Alessandro Achillini Alessandro Achillini (''Latin'' Alexander Achillinus; 20 or 29 October 1463 (or possibly 1461)2 August 1512) was an Italian philosopher and physician. He is known for the anatomic studies that he was able to publish, made possible by a 13th-centu ...

. His comparison of the cerebral cavities to the human ear has persuaded F. Portal that he knew the inferior cornua, the

hippocampus The hippocampus (: hippocampi; via Latin from Ancient Greek, Greek , 'seahorse'), also hippocampus proper, is a major component of the brain of humans and many other vertebrates. In the human brain the hippocampus, the dentate gyrus, and the ...

and its prolongations; but this is no reason for giving him that honour to the detriment of the reputation of Achillini, to whom, so far as historical testimony goes, the first knowledge of this fact is due. The researches of Éstienne into the structure of the

nervous system In biology, the nervous system is the complex system, highly complex part of an animal that coordinates its behavior, actions and sense, sensory information by transmitting action potential, signals to and from different parts of its body. Th ...

are, however, neither useless nor inglorious; and the circumstance of demonstrating a canal through the entire length of the

spinal cord The spinal cord is a long, thin, tubular structure made up of nervous tissue that extends from the medulla oblongata in the lower brainstem to the lumbar region of the vertebral column (backbone) of vertebrate animals. The center of the spinal c ...

, which had neither been suspected by contemporaries nor noticed by successors till Jean-Baptiste de Sénac (1693–1770) made it known, is sufficient to place him high in the rank of anatomical discoverers. In 1551, when Robert Estienne left

for

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, Charles, who had remained a

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, took charge of his printing establishment, and in the same year was appointed king's printer. In 1561 he became bankrupt, and he is said to have died in a debtors' prison. His principal works are: *''Praedium Rusticum'' (1554), a collection of tracts which he had compiled from ancient writers on various branches of

agriculture Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created ...

, and which continued to be a favorite book down to the end of the 17th century *''Dictionarium historicum ad poeticum'' (1553), the first French

encyclopedia An encyclopedia is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge, either general or special, in a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into article (publishing), articles or entries that are arranged Alp ...

*''Thesaurus Ciceronianus'' (1557) *''De dissectione partium corporis humani libri tres'', with well-drawn woodcuts (1545) He also published a translation of an Italian comedy, ''Gli Ingannati'', under the title of ''Le Sacrifice'' (1543; republished as ''Les Abus'', 1549), which had some influence on the development of French comedy; and ''Paradoxes'' (1553), an imitation of the ''Paradossi'' of Ortensio Landi. His daughter Nicole Estienne became a prolific poet.

Works

* ''Sylua : Frutetum; Collis'' . F. Stephanus, Parisiis 153
Digital edition
by the

University and State Library Düsseldorf The University and State Library Düsseldorf (, abbreviated ULB Düsseldorf) is a central service institution of Heinrich Heine University. Along with Bonn and Münster, it is also one of the three State Libraries of North Rhine-Westphalia. ...

* ''L' agriculture et maison rustique'' as the German Translation''Siben Bücher Von dem Feldbau, und vollkommener bestellung eynes ordentlichen Mayerhofs oder Landguts'', Strassburg 1580, doi:10.3931/e-rara-86649 (Digitized Edition at E-rara).

References

External links

Charles Estienne: De dissectione partium corporis humani libri tres. (Paris, 1545)
Selected pages scanned from the original work. Historical Anatomies on the Web. US National Library of Medicine.
Online Galleries, History of Science Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries
High resolution images of works by and/or portraits of Charles Estienne in .jpg and .tiff format. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Estienne, Charles 1504 births 1564 deaths French medical writers French anatomists 16th-century French physicians 16th-century French writers 16th-century French male writers French translators French male non-fiction writers