This book offers a unique and comprehensive outline of the ethos, the bioethics and the sexual ethics of the renowned anatomist and founder of modern geology, Niels Stensen. It tells the story of a student who is forced to defend himself against his professor who tries to plagiarize his first discovery, the “Ductus Stenonis”: the first performance test for the young researcher. The focal points are questions of bioethics, especially with regard to human reproduction, sexual ethics, the beginning of life (...) and the ensoulment of the embryo, together with frontiers of pastoral care. The book delineates Stensen’s ethos as well as its medico-ethical and theological implications and reception by researchers and physicians from the 17th century until today, and asks about his lasting significance. Despite dating back more than 300 years, Stensen’s character and his work offer up surprisingly topical answers to current questions on the nature of professional ethics in medical science and practice. Furthermore, “Ethos, Bioethics, and Sexual Ethics in Work and Reception of the Anatomist Niels Stensen : Circulation of Love” is the first academic book on bioethics and sexual ethics with a foreword by the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. A fascinating book for bioethicists, physicians, members of health professions, scientists, and theologians. (shrink)

The anatomist Nicolaus Steno, a key figure of the Scientific Revolution and founder of modern geology, engaged in research on human procreation and proved for the first time that women have ovaries and not so-called female testicles. Steno took the view of “simultaneous animation” of the embryo and demythologized malformations of the embryo by appealing to original sin. His sexual ethics presages the pastoral constitution Gaudium et spes. Steno, who was later ordained a priest and consecrated a bishop, was a (...) defender of human life and looked at the human body as an “interpreter” of divine love. He was beatified by Pope St. John Paul II in 1988; his tomb is in the Basilica San Lorenzo in Florence. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 15.1 : 107–126. (shrink)