Nicolaes Tulp Nicolaes Tulp Nicolaes Tulp (9 October 1593 – 12 September 1674) was a Dutch surgeon and mayor of Amsterdam. Tulp was well known for his upstanding moral character and as the subject of Rembrandt's famous painting "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp". Born Claes Pieterszoon, he was the son of a prosperous merchant active in civic affairs in Amsterdam. From 1611 to 1614 he studied medicine in Leiden. When he returned to Amsterdam he became a respected doctor and in 1617 he married Aagfe Van der Voegh. An ambitious young man, he adopted the tulip as his heraldric emblem
Nicolaes Tulp the condition we know as migraine, the devastating effects of tobacco smoking on the lungs, and reveals an understanding of human psychology in a description of the placebo effect. Tulp also discovered the ileocecal valve at the junction of the large and small intestines, still known as Tulp's valve. While Tulp made observations of various diseases, treatment often continued in the age-old way. His description of the symptoms of Beriberi in a Dutch seaman, for example, went unnoticed until the cause (vitamin B1 deficiency) was recognized two hundred years later by Christiaan Eijkman. Partially as a result of the success