[Outstanding anatomist Felix Vicq-d'Azyr (1748-1794)]

Felix Vicq-d'Azyr (1748-1794) was a distinguished eighteenth-century scientist, personal physician to Queen Marie Antoinette and secretary of the Royal Society of Medicine, who made significant contributions to theoretical and practical medicine, most notably to neuroanatomy. His descriptions of the brain were among the most accurate of the time, and his «Traité d'Anatomie et de Physiologie» is one of the best neuroanatomical works. Vicq-d'Azyr was the first to use lithography in neuroanatomy, as well as the founder of the technique for dissecting fixed brain matter. The scientist first described a number of neuroanatomical structures, including the central sulcus (almost 50 years before Rolando), the insula, the red nucleus and the substantia nigra. The mammillothalamic fasciculus («bundle of Vicq-d'Azyr») are named after him; it was he who called the relief elements of the cerebral cortex «gyri». He carefully studied and described the internal structures of the brain, in particular, the corpus callosum, the fornix, which connects the hippocampus with the hypothalamus and the right hemisphere with the left, the anterior perforated substance, the gray matter inside the hemispheres (striatum), and communication pathways between the ventricles of the brain. Despite the fact that Vicq-d'Azyr lived a short life and did not have time to publish his anatomical works in the intended volume, he left a rich scientific heritage, and his discoveries were a significant impetus for the development of neuroanatomy.