LECTURE VI. 



SYLVIUS AND HIS PUPILS. THE PHYSIOLOGY OF 

 DIGESTION IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 



I pkopose to devote the present Lecture to an account of 

 some men of the seventeenth century who may be regarded as 

 the successors of van Helmont in chemical physiology, at least 

 in that part of it which concerns digestion. But, before doing 

 so, I should like to turn aside for a while to say something 

 about a man, who, in the very early years of that century, 

 though he did not deal much with either the new chemical or 

 the new physical ideas, yet by applying the chief instrument of 

 physical inquiry, namely exact measurement, to the determina- 

 tion of chemical data opened up a line of inquiry which, unknown 

 before him and not greatly used in the times after him, has in 

 these later years been made to produce most valuable results. 



Of the life of Sanctorius Sanctorius we know very little. 

 He was born at Capo d* Istria in 1561, he studied and 

 graduated at Padua, and after travelling a good deal practised 

 for some time in Venice. He was later on called to be 

 professor of theoretical medicine in the University of Padua, 

 where he gave a discourse in 1612, and where he achieved 

 much fame, drawing many students to his lectures. After a 

 while however he withdrew again to private practice in Venice, 

 in which city he died in 1636. 



In 1614 he published at Venice a small book entitled 



Medical Statics, which subsequently passed through many 



editions and was translated into several languages. It is 



composed of several hundred short aphorisms, dealing with air 



f. l. 10 



