Fun Facts about the Faculty: Bartholin
Thomas Bartholin, Senior (1616-1680). Bartholin is probably best known to most people from the biomedical building complex and the road in University Park bearing his name. Others may recall that he was the 17th-century Danish doctor and anatomist who first discovered and described the lymphatic system in humans. But did you know that …
- ... Bartholin is a Latinisation of the name ‘Bertelsen’, which was his fraternal grandfather’s rather more down-to-earth surname? Thomas Bartholin was the second of six sons, and became orphaned as a 13-year-old in 1629. He was then raised by his uncle and guardian, the doctor Ole Worm, who has also given his name to a road in University Park. The Bartholin family was full of scientists, and spawned no less than twelve professors at the University of Copenhagen.
- ... Thomas Bartholin was Royal Physician to Christian V? In 1663, after retiring from teaching at the University of Copenhagen, Bartholin bought the manor house of Hagestedgaard near Holbæk. Seven years later, however, it burned down, and his large library with its many manuscripts was lost. The King subsequently made Bartholin his Royal Physician at a handsome salary, and also made the manor tax-free as consolation prize.
- ... Denmark’s first medical law came into being thanks to Thomas Bartholin? In fact, Bartholin was one of the driving forces behind the 1672 decree, which separated the pharmaceutical and medical professions and stipulated that only university-educated medici (the Latin term for ‘doctors’) could style themselves medical doctors. Surgeons were not allowed to do so.