of the professor in the place of authority were well nigh deserted.

Famed for his avarice and the strictness with which he exacted his fee from the students, requiring it to be paid every month, he on one occasion threatened to close his doors until the money due from two of them was either paid, or they were expelled by their fellows! A miser in the most absolute sense of the word, he lived a solitary life as a bachelor, scarcely allowing himself the barest necessaries of life, and no fire through the bitter Parisian winter; but taking a turn at hand-ball ever and anon in his chamber to keep himself warm! Though it was known that he must have amassed a large fortune, but little was found after his death; and that secreted in unlikely corners--he had hidden away his treasure where it was never discovered.

of

Sylvius must have possessed the art of the lecturer in perfection; he had large audiences, as said, and seems always to have proceeded by the way demonstration: he did not lecture in the style which appears to have been in fashion with other anatomists, from the writings of Galen, but from the dead body; and when his subject was the materia medica, which he also taught, there were the drugs and preparations in presence; when it was botany, specimens of the plants described were on the table, and so on.

Sylvius was the first who gave particular names to the muscles, and who distinguished between those of

automatic life and those under the control of the will. The muscles of automatic life he describes under the generic title of villi, their fibres, unlike what is seen in the muscles of voluntary motion, being disposed in layers overlying one another in different directions— longitudinally, transversely, and obliquely. Under his category of villi fall the muscular compages of the heart, stomach and urinary bladder; the straight fibres in each attracting, the transverse expelling, and the oblique retarding or retaining. It is by the action of the longitudinal bundles, consequently, that the heart has its principal attractive power-the diastole; by the action of the transverse bundles its expulsive property—the systole; and by that of the oblique bundles combining with the other two orders, its retaining quality (lib. i. chap. 5).

Sylvius, however, had highly complicated ideas on the motions of the heart. By its diastole he says it attracts blood into the right ventricle from the vena cava, and air into the left from the arteria venosa (pulmonary vein); by its systole, again, it throws the blood it has attracted into the vena arteriosa (pulmonary artery) and arteria magna (aorta), and certain fuliginous vapours or excrementitious matters into the arteria venosa (pulmonary vein). It is by means of its oblique fibres that the heart, in the interval between the diastole and systole, is enabled to free itself of fuliginous vapours.

I find little in Sylvius with which we are not already

familiar through Galen; but his notice of the valves of the veins is original-he having been aware of the existence of these appendages; and his account of the influence of the foramen ovale of the fœtal heart is not to be found in the works of his predecessors. "In the foetal heart," he says, "there is a certain membrane, in the nature of a covercle or lid, at the orifice of the vessel which connects the vena cava with the arteria venosa. It is readily turned towards the orifice of the vas arteriosum, and thereby prevents the blood from entering the lungs; but on the birth of the child the membrane. coalesces with the edges of the orifice it had hitherto left free, and closes it in the course of the first day, but sometimes not until several days have passed.

"There is a membranous process (epiphysis) of a similar kind at the commencement of the vena azygos, and others also in more than one of the great vessels, such as the jugulars, brachials, crural veins, and trunk of the cava as it leaves the liver. The use of all of these processes, says Sylvius, is the same as that of the membranes which close the orifices of the heart. Some of the membranes in question have even delicate layers of muscular fibres like those of the larger veins and arteries, the oesophagus, urinary bladder, &c."1

1 "Membranæ quoque epiphysis est in ore venæ azygi, vasorumque aliorum magnorum sæpe, ut jugularium, brachialium, cruralium, trunco cavæ ex hepate prosilientis, usus ejusdem cum membranis ora vasorum cordis claudentibus." In Hippocratis et Galeni physiologia Isagoge. Venet., 1536. 12mo. Lib. I., cap. 3, p. 31α.

The valve at the root of the vena azygos became the subject of fre

Sylvius was the first who thought of using injections in tracing the blood-vessels, and so could not fail to discover the obstructions which his liquids, or the air he tried to blow into them, met with in the veins. Strange as it seems to us now, however, and in spite of his assimilating their function to that of the cardiac valves, he does not see their real significance. Galen had said that the veins were the channels of the nutrient blood, and Sylvius was content to have it pass the obstructions within as it best could!

Fabricius of Aquapendente, we might imagine, could hardly have been unacquainted with the Isagoge of Jacobus Sylvius, although we must admit that intercourse between Paris and Padua may have been less easy in his day than it is in ours. Still, that there was intercourse cannot be doubted. But Fabricius has not been challenged by his countrymen, as they have challenged Harvey, with ignoring what others had done before him; nor has he been spoken of as a plagiarist, because, following the fashion of his age, and believing he had himself something which was new to impart, he failed to refer more particularly to his predecessors for what was familiarly known to be theirs.

quent discussion in after years. If it is ever found in the human subject, it certainly is not a constant structure; neither are any valves found in the vena cava or vena hepatica in man; but they exist in some of the lower animals-in the dog, among others. Sylvius and they who followed him probably described what they saw from the bodies of four-footed

creatures.

WINTER OF ANDERNACH.

GUINTERUS (Joannes) Andernacus,-John Winter of Andernach, in the old Archiepiscopate of Cologne. Born in 1487, he died in 1574.' As the master of Vesalius and Servetus, this accomplished scholar and able man, had he no other claim, would require a passing notice at our hands. Of humble origin, having had innumerable difficulties to contend with in early life, but by indomitable perseverance and frugality overcoming them all, he achieved the very highest distinction, first in Greek letters, and then in medicine. Whilst engaged as Professor of Greek at Leyden, Winter had Vesalius among the number of his youthful scholars; and subsequently, after removing to Paris, and when the pupil was more advanced in years, as his anatomical prosector. Such was the reputation Winter now attained in his profession that he was appointed Physician to Francis the First, and on his demise to Henry the Second of France. But the Reformation had by this time spread to the

1 Institutionum Anatomicarum ex Galeni sententia, Libri iii. Basil, 1539; and many other works, particularly translations from the works of Galen.