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science; the results he achieved here were not published until after his 

 death. 



To Fallopio's professorship, which, as mentioned above, Vesalius had 

 hoped to resume, was appointed after the latter's death another scientist 

 who was also a pioneer in his branch — Girolamo Fabrizio, usually called, 

 after the place of his birth, Fabricius ab Aquapendente, to distinguish him 

 from a contemporary German anatomist Fabricius. Born in 1537, he studied 

 under Fallopio, was his prosector, and succeeded him as professor in 1565. 

 In contrast to his famous predecessors he lived to a good old age: he died in 

 1 61 9, having been for ten years emeritus professor. Besides anatomy he lec- 

 tured on surgery; he raised that despised "handicraft" to the rank of a 

 science and was himself an eminent practitioner, his profession bringing him 

 immense wealth, which he generously utilized for the benefit of science. Ana- 

 tomical research was in his time liberally patronized by the Venetian Govern- 

 ment, which built a fine anatomical theatre and paid generous salaries to its 

 staff. 



Fabrizio was a very productive scientist, though more qualitatively 

 than quantitatively. His predecessors had devoted themselves exclusively 

 to human anatomy, and such contributions to comparative anatomical re- 

 search as had been made in other quarters — Pierre Belon's, for instance — 

 had passed practically unnoticed. Fabrizio adopted the method of compara- 

 tive research, which really no one since Aristotle had applied with anything 

 like original results, and he developed it further in one of the most important 

 spheres of biology — namely, embryology. His treatises on the evolution 

 of the egg and the embryo present in clear and concise form, with good illus- 

 trations, the process of embryonic development in a large number of verte- 

 brates: birds and reptiles, mammals and sharks. He describes the anatomy 

 of the embryo and the shape and appearance of the placenta and embryonic 

 tissues, pointing out the similarities and differences between the various 

 animal forms, with a wealth of hitherto unknown facts, which it would take 

 too long to follow in detail. Fabrizio employs the same comparative method 

 in a number of other spheres of biology. Thus, he describes the movements 

 of animals from a comparative point of view; again he studies the noises of 

 animals. This leads him to make an interesting attempt at animal psy- 

 chology — certainly the first of its kind. Amongst his purely anatomical 

 works may be noted his investigations into the structure of the ear, the eye, 

 and the larynx. Of more definite value to posterity, however, was a three- 

 page article on the venous valves, which he discovered experimentally — 

 through binding the limbs of live human subjects for the purpose of bleed- 

 ing — and which he afterwards closely studied with reference to their 

 structure and distribution. In spite of this discovery, which was so obviously 

 at variance with the Galenian theory of circulation, he could not abandon 



