Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/380

 CHAPTER XXVII

THE FOUNDERS OF HUMAN ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY

Among the earliest physicians of this period to inculcate the importance of substituting a correct knowledge of anatomy for the frequently incorrect descriptions that had been prepared by Galen and handed down through the succeeding centuries, were the following: Jacques DuBois of Paris (1478-1555), who was perhaps better known by his latinized name of "Sylvius"; Guido Guidi (died in 1569), who was also known as "Vidus Vidius"; and Winther of Andernach, a small city on the Rhine. These three men, all of whom taught anatomy at Paris, were commonly considered the best anatomists of that early period. DuBois was further entitled to the credit of having been the first physician to inject blood-vessels with a material that renders them more easily visible, and also the first person in Paris to dissect a human corpse. It was from these men that Vesalius, who afterward became such a famous anatomist, received his first practical instruction in this branch of medical science. Nothing further need be said here of DuBois, but brief sketches of Guido Guidi and of Berengarius of Carpi, another contemporary anatomist of considerable distinction, deserve to find places in our history of this period. Vesalius' facetious remark that "Winther of Andernach never used a knife except for the purpose of dissecting his food" absolves us from the duty of saying anything further about his career as an anatomist.

In 1542 Francis the First, King of France, gave a great impulse to the study of medicine by calling Guido Guidi from Florence, Italy, to teach that science in the Collége