152 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



A contemporary of Goiter's, but one who consider- 

 ably outlived him, was Jerome Fabrici, a name grateful 

 to Englishmen as that of the teacher of William Harvey, 

 and who, by demonstrating the valves of the veins to his 

 English pupil, played no inconsiderable part in the 

 discovery of the circulation. He is almost the last of the 

 great Paduan anatomists. The decline of the school, 

 already apparent in his own time, made fatal progress in 

 the next two generations, and Spigelius was the last of 

 the old anatomists of Padua whose reputation extended 

 beyond the common room of his own University. But 

 Fabricius was the most famous teacher of anatomy of 

 his day, and students assembled from the whole of Europe 

 to profit by his lectures and demonstrations. The 

 University paid him the sincere and grateful com- 

 pliment of building what was regarded as an " ample 

 and splendid " theatre to accommodate his large classes — 

 a gloomy and unsuitable erection which has happily 

 survived the censure of posterity. Time has failed to 

 endorse his abilities as worthy of the great traditions of 

 his chair, and it is difficult to forgive, though it is easy 

 to understand, the lack of enterprise which handed over 

 to a pupil a discovery properly his own. And as a 

 comparative anatomist Fabricius shines with no 

 steadier light. The conspicuous example of self 

 confidence and independent judgment provided by his 

 most illustrious predecessor in the chair of anatomy at 

 Padua does not inspire him to trust in his own genius and 

 fortune, and to bring a severe and critical faculty to bear 

 upon the writings of the ancients. His respect for 

 classical authority, in accordance with the most 

 conservative traditions of the human mind, is con- 

 stantly at variance with the evidence of his own senses. 

 He moves forward, he hesitates, he looks back, he is 



