Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/406

 following organizations also deserve to be honorably mentioned in this place: the Accademia dei Lincei at Rome, founded in 1603; the Académie des Curieux de la Nature, 1652; and the Accademia del Cimento, founded at Florence in 1657. New universities were also founded in Germany.

During the second half of the seventeenth century there were three French physicians who deserve credit for the excellence of the work which they did in the departments of anatomy and physiology, viz., Vieussens, du Verney and Dionis.

Raymond Vieussens (1641-1716), a native of Rovergue, was Professor of Anatomy at the University of Montpellier, in Southern France. Some idea of the extraordinary industry displayed by this anatomist may be gained from the fact that he is credited with having dissected more than five hundred bodies. His more important published works relate to the heart, the nervous system and the structures of the organ of hearing. Pagel speaks of him as being entitled to the name of founder of the pathology of diseases of the heart.

Jean Guichard du Verney (1648-1730), who held the Chair of Anatomy in the University of Paris, gained a large part of his fame as an anatomist from the excellence of his investigations into the complicated structures of the internal ear.

Pierre Dionis, who died in 1718, was Demonstrator of Anatomy and Surgery at the Jardin du Roi in Paris during the latter part of the seventeenth century and early part of the eighteenth. In 1690 he published a treatise on anatomy which remained the standard book on this subject for a number of years. In course of time it was translated into the Latin, English, German and Chinese languages.

Dissecting Made a Part of the Regular Training of a Medical Student.—The opportunities for dissecting human bodies varied greatly in different parts of Europe during the period of which I am now treating. Vieussens, as we have just seen, dissected no fewer than five hundred bodies during his long professorship at Montpellier; and Joseph Lieutaud, Professor of Anatomy at Paris, dissected