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inventor." Passing over the picturesque story of that learned physician 

 FRANQOIS RABELAIS (1483-1553), the immortal author of 

 Pantagruel and creator of Doctor Rondibilis, we come to JACOBUS 

 SYLVIUS — Jacques du Bois — who was born at Amiens in 1478, and 

 died in 1555, set. 77. Sylvius, from 1531, lectured at Paris to large 

 audiences, and his fame as a lecturer attracted many students, 

 including Vesalius. He succeeded the Florentine Vidus Vidius in 

 the Chair of Medicine in the College de France, which was founded 

 by Francois I. in 1529. He was an out-and-out Galenist, and taught 

 that the veins carried the nutrient blood to the parts to be nourished. 

 After his death his Isagoge Jnatomica,' or Introduction to Anatomy, 

 was published. He described valves in veins, which he calls epiphyses 

 s. membraneas epiphyses, at the orifice of the vena azygos, in the 

 jugular, brachial, and crural veins, and was the first to use injections 

 to trace the course of blood vessels. He also described the foramen 

 ovale, and how it is closed several days after birth. He accurately 

 described the quadratics femoris muscle, and gave names to particular 

 muscles. He distinguished those muscles under the control of the 

 will from those of automatic life. The latter he describes under the 

 name of villi and includes the heart, stomach, and urinary bladder. 

 His name is associated with the Fissure of Sylvius. 



ANDREA VESALIUS. 



15H-1564- 



\ NDREA VESALIUS, a native of Brussels, was born on Decem- 

 x\. ber 31st, 1514 — dodrante post quintam matutinam. His father 

 was apothecary to the Archduke, afterwards Charles V. Vesalius 

 studied at Louvain and Leyden, and proceeded to Paris in 1533, where 

 he attended the lectures and demonstrations of Jacobus Sylvius and 

 Guinterius (Joannes) of Andernach (1487-1574). Vesalius had been 

 a pupil of Winter's at Leyden, when Winter taught Greek there. 

 Winter became a lecturer on anatomy in Paris, and was physician to 

 Francois I. He tells us that he had as his prosectors, " first, 

 Andrea Vesalius, a young man, by Hercules ! of singular zeal in the 

 study of anatomy ; and, second, Michael Villanovus (Servetus), 

 deeply imbued with learning of every kind, and behind none in his 

 knowledge of doctrine. With the aid of these two I have examined 

 the muscles, veins, arteries, and nerves of the whole body, and 

 demonstrated them to the students." Vesalius himself tells us how 

 he learned his anatomy, and his method is still the only true one. 



" My study of anatomy would never have succeeded bad I, when working at 

 medicine in Paris, been willing that the viscera should be merely shown to me and 

 to my fellow-students at one or another public dissection by wholly unskilled barbers, 

 and that in the most superficial way. I had to put my own hand to the business." 



