Frontispiece from the book Medicina Statica, published in 1614 by Sanctorius Sanctorius (1561- 1636), Italian physician. Sanctorius is seated in the balance he constructed for quantitative measurement of the human body. A professor of Medicine at the University of Padua, he used it to measure small changes in human body weight on a daily basis. He showed that they lost weight while inactive through insensible perspiration". This marks the beginning of the study of metabolism. Sanctorius established the use of the clinical thermometer & invented a device to measure the pulse known as a pulsilogium."