lo6 THE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY 



the latter; he explained away his discovery, and it was left to one of his 

 pupils, the Englishman Harvey, using this fact as a starting-point, to formu- 

 late a true conception of the circulation of the blood. 



Fabrizio was the last of the great anatomists of Padua — a line of great 

 men in the service of biological research, such as scarcely any other university 

 has been able to produce in an unbroken sequence. But besides these Italy 

 possessed in the sixteenth century a great number of eminent specialists in 

 the field of anatomy. Space, however, does not permit of our dealing with 

 more than one or two of them as examples of the enthusiasm with which 

 anatomical research was carried on in the country in which Vesalius stimu- 

 lated such interest in that branch. 



Bartolommeo Eustacchi was a student of research possessing wide in- 

 terests and deep knowledge, which, however, owing to the unhappy fate 

 that befell his works, came to have but little influence on the progress of 

 science. The date of his birth and the early circumstances of his life are un- 

 known to us; in the middle of the sixteenth century we find him in practice as 

 a physician in Rome and then as professor at a papal medical academy. He 

 died in 1574. He had recorded his widely extensive anatomical investigations 

 in a richly illustrated work, which at his death was ready for the press. It 

 was withdrawn, however, and never published until 1714, when most of it 

 was naturally out of date. During his life, Eustacchi found time to publish 

 a number of smaller treatises, Opuscula anatomka, among which were several 

 important investigations, as, for instance, that of the auditory organ, in 

 which the Eustachian tube still bears his name, and of the blood-circulation 

 and dental development in the embryo. 



Another eminent anatomist was Costanzo Varolio, of Bologna (1543- 

 75), who in the course of a short life managed to carry out important in- 

 vestigations into the nervous system, in which the pns Varolii in the brain 

 is named after him. 



Far more remarkable than these two, however, is Cesalpino, a scientist 

 who made weighty contributions in several different fields of research; in 

 biology, as a speculative natural philosopher, and as a botanist. His life's 

 work, however, is best described in another connexion, among the pioneers 

 in the discovery of the circulation of the blood. 



The position of Marc' Aurelio Severino among the Italian anatomists 

 is a curious one. Born in 1 5 80 in south Italy, he came at an early age to Naples, 

 where he studied the humanistic sciences and philosophy under the famous 

 Campanella, known as a keen opponent of Aristotle and as a victim of 

 political and scientific persecution. Soon, however, Severino began to devote 

 himself to the study of medicine and was appointed professor of anatomy 

 and surgery at Naples. He had, besides, a wide medical practice. At one time 

 he was subjected to persecution by the Inquisition and had to flee from Naples, 



