Leonardo Botallo

Leonardo Botallo, known in Latin as Leonardi Botalli Astensis, was an Italian anatomist born in 1530 who died around 1587. His name is attached to the foramen Botalli, the opening that lets blood pass from the right to the left atrium in the fetal heart, and to the ductus Botalli, which joins the pulmonary artery to the descending aorta, although both attributions are now thought to be mistaken because those details were added in posthumous editions of his work. Among his treatises is De curandis vulneribus sclopettorum, published in 1560, which examined gunshot wounds and questioned the contemporary view that such wounds should be treated as though they were poisoned. He is remembered mainly as a Renaissance anatomist and wound surgeon whose eponyms outlived the accuracy of their attribution.