Massa versus Haller: Priority of the Cerebrospinal Fluid Discovery

Abstract

The commonly accepted practice in recognizing the scientific priority of a discovery requires finding a hitherto unknown phenomenon, publishing it to other scholars and doing it for the first time. And this is what happened regarding the discovery of the intracranial fluid presence by the Venetian anatomist Massa in 1536. This finding fulfills all the conditions necessary for the recognition of the scientific discovery.