Jean Pecquet (1622–1674). To the 400th anniversary of the birth

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the 400th anniversary of the birth of the outstanding French anatomist, physician and philosopher Jean Pecquet (1622–1674). Pecquet’s biography is connected with the city of Dieppe, where the future scientist was born and got his primary education, and with Paris, where he made his main discoveries in anatomy. Throughout his life, Pecquet collaborated with many prominent scientists of that time (Jacques Mentel, Louis Gayant, Jean Riolan (the Younger)), including not only physicians and anatomists, but also physicists such as Blaise Pascal, Edme Mariotte, Marin Mersenne and Evangelista Torricelli. Pecquet’s most famous discovery is the chyle cictern, or cisterna chyli. The structure was named after of the scientist – “Pecquet’s reservoir (cistern)”. But more revolutionary discovery made by Pecquet is revealing and proving the fact that the lymphatic ducts flow into the superior vena cava indirectly through the venous angles and refuting the conventional opinion on the drainage of lymph into the liver. An important help in Pecquet’s anatomical research and experiments was his passion for the physical and mathematical sciences. In collaboration with Edme Marriott, Pecquet studied the structure of the eyeball and turned out to be more foresighted, because, unlike Marriott, he correctly understood the role of the retina in the functioning of the eye as an organ of vision. Pecquet was one of William Harvey’s supporters regarding his concept of blood circulation. He introduced cutting-edge at that moment technologies into the anatomy methodology, including animal experiments in vivo, and made a fateful contribution to the progress of anatomical science.