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THOMAS WILLIS. 



1621-1675. 



THIS fashionable physician, whose name comes down to us in 

 the " circle of Willis " and " accessory nerve of Willis," was 

 born at Great Bedwyn in Wiltshire. At first he studied 

 theology at Oxford and took his M.A. in 1642. Later he took to 

 medicine. He was made Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy in 

 Oxford in 1660 at the Restoration, and went to London in 1666, 

 where he practised until his death. He gave accurate descriptions of 

 the brain, but, perhaps, the chief merit in this regard belongs to 

 Lower, rather than to Willis. His views about the physiology of the 

 brain in particular were vague to a degree (Stensen's discourse, p. 32). 

 There are some indications in his works that he had some glimmering 

 of what are known now as reflex actions. 



R. VIEUSSENS. 



16411716. 



MONTPELLIER has given many distinguished sons both to 

 science and to letters. Raymond Vieussens was for a long time 

 Professor of Anatomy, and the numerous autopsies which 

 he conducted enabled him to contribute materially to the advancement 

 of anatomy. We still speak of the" valve of Vieussens" andthe"annulus 

 of Vieussens." He was the first to describe the centrum ovale, and 

 the pyramids and olives of the medulla oblonyata. His Neurologia 

 Universalis, with many excellent plates, was published in Lyons, 1685. 



In 1688 he published his De natura fermentations, 



in which he describes various forms of fermentation on the lines of 

 Van Helmont and Sylvius. His chemical doctrines brought him into 

 conflict with his colleague Chirac. He gave many fantastic names to 

 different parts of the brain. Judging from the diatribe of Stensen 

 on this subject, one would have thought that there were few of such 

 names left for appropriation. 



I have already referred to the fact that the influence of the 

 discoveries of Torricelli and Galileo soon made itself felt in England, 

 and how the Royal Society came to be, founded. Conspicuous 

 amongst its early members were Glisson, Boyle, Hooke, and Lower. 



" The early part of the seventeenth century, when Descartes reached manhood, is one 

 of the great epochs of the intellectual life of mankind. At that time physical science 

 suddenly strode into the arena of public and familiar thought, and openly challenged, not 

 only Philosophy and the Church, but that common ignorance which passes by the 

 name of common sense. The assertion of the motion of the earth was a defiance to all 



these, and Physical Science threw down her glove by the hand of Galileo 



But two hundred years have passed, and, however feeble or faulty her soldiers, Physical 

 Science sits crowned as one of the legitimate rulers of the world of thought." (T. H. 

 Huxley, On Descartes, 1872.) 



