Charles Estienne

Charles Estienne (1504 to 1564), known in Latin as Carolus Stephanus and in English as Charles Stephens, was an early exponent of the science of anatomy in France. He was a younger brother of the printer Robert Estienne I and a son of Henri, who Latinized the family name as Stephanus. After a humanist education he studied medicine and took his doctor's degree at Paris, and was for a time tutor to the future poet Jean-Antoine de Baïf. He did not share the servile imitation of Galenic anatomy of his contemporary Jacques Dubois, appears to have been the first to detect valves in the orifice of the hepatic veins, and demonstrated a canal through the entire length of the spinal cord, which went unnoticed until Jean-Baptiste de Sénac made it known. In 1551, when Robert left Paris for Geneva, he took charge of the family printing house and was appointed king's printer, but he went bankrupt in 1561 and is said to have died in a debtors' prison.