BARTHOLINUS, GASPARD (CASPAR BERTHELSEN) (1585-1629), physician, was born in 1585 at Malmo, in Sweden. His precocity was extraordinary; at three years of age he was able to read, and in his 13th year he composed Greek and Latin orations and delivered them in public. He studied at Copenhagen and afterwards at Rostock and Wittenberg. He then travelled through Germany, the Netherlands, England, France and Italy. In 1613 he became professor of medicine in the university of Copenhagen, and filled that office for I I years, when, falling into a dangerous illness, he made a vow that if he should recover he would apply himself solely to the study of divinity. He fulfilled his vow by becoming professor of divinity at Copenhagen and canon of Roskilde. He died on July 13, 1620, at Soro in Zeeland.
Of his sons, THOMAS (1616-168o) was born" at Copenhagen, where, after a long course of study in various universities of Europe, he was appointed successively professor of mathematics (1647) and anatomy (1648). During his tenure of the latter chair he distinguished himself by observations on the lymphatics. In 166i he retired to Hagestaed. He died at Hagestaed in 1680. Another son, ERASMUS (1625-1698), born at Roskilde, spent Io years in visiting England, Holland, Germany and Italy, and filled the chairs of mathematics and medicine at Copenhagen. He dis covered double refraction in Iceland spar (Experimenta crystalli islandici disdiaclastici, Copenhagen, 1669) . He died at Copen hagen in 1698. In the third generation CASPAR THOMESON (1655– 1738), son of Thomas, also taught anatomy at Copenhagen, his name being associated with the description of one of the ducts of the sublingual gland and of the glandulae Bartholini, while his younger brother, THOMAS (I659-169o), was a student of northern antiquities who published Antiquitatum Danicarum libri tres in 1689.