A critical figure in building the understanding of Dorello's canal was Harris Holmes Vail, a young otolaryngologist from Harvard Medical School, who in 1922 became the first person to describe Dorello's canal in the English language. Vail conducted his own detailed anatomical studies on cadavers, and his publication not only reaffirmed Dorello's findings but also immortalized the eponym used today-“Dorello's canal.”

Vail, in his own anatomical dissections, observed that within the canal, the abducens nerve was lateral to the meningeal artery and inferior to the inferior petrosal sinus ¹⁾.

Reddy et al. review the life and contributions of Wenzel Leopold Gruber, Primo Dorello, Giuseppe Conte Gradenigo, and Vail, four men who played a critical role in the discovery of Dorello's canal and paved the way toward the current understanding of the canal as a key clinical and surgical entity ²⁾.