The character of Sylvius was contemptible. He was a man of vast learning and at the same time was rough, coarse and brutal. His avarice led him to endure the cold winters of Paris without the benefit of a fire; in severe weather he would play at football, or engage in other violent exercise in his room, to save the cost of fuel. Once, and once only, did his friends find him hilarious; they wondered and asked the cause. Sylvius said he was happy because he had dismissed his “three beasts, his mule, his cat and his maid”. He was notoriously rigid in exacting his fees from students, and on one occasion he threatened to stop his lectures until two delinquents should pay their dues. Although he was supposed to have amassed great wealth, little of it was found after his death, and these sums were secreted in secluded places. In 1616, when his former residence in the rue Saint-Jacques was demolished, numerous gold pieces were found. His reputation for miserliness followed him beyond the grave, as witness his epitaph:
Sylbius hic situs est, gratis qui nil dedit unquàm,
Mortuus et gratis quod legis ista dolet.
“Sylvius lies here, who never gave anything for nothing:
Being dead, he even grieves that you read these lines for nothing.”
In controversies he was violent and vindictive—a pastmaster in the use of bitter language. Jealous of the fame of other anatomists, he was particularly enraged when, in later years, he was opposed by Vesalius. Sylvius spoke of him not as Vesalius, but as Vesanus, a madman, who poisoned Europe by his impiety and clouded knowledge by his blunders. Such was the man who, in the mid-part of the sixteenth century, filled the position of highest honor in the Medical Faculty of the Collége de France[13].
Sylvius rendered valuable service in naming the muscles which, prior to his time, were designated by numbers. These, says Northcote[14] “were differently applied by almost every author; so that it was the description, and not the name, that must lead one to know what part was meant by such authors; and this required a previous thorough knowledge of anatomy”. He is the first writer who mentions colored injections and is supposed to have discovered this useful adjunct of anatomical study. He was the first anatomist who published satisfactory descriptions of the pterygoid and clinoid processes of the sphenoid bone, and of the os unguis. He gave a good account of the sphenoidal sinus in the adult but denied its existence in the child, as had been affirmed by Fallopius[15]. Sylvius also wrote intelligently concerning the vertebrae but incorrectly described the sternum. His observation concerning the valves in the veins gave rise to much discussion; the honor of priority in the discovery, however, belongs to other anatomists—Estienne and Cannanus. His discoveries in cerebral anatomy have caused his name to be attached to the aqueduct, the fissure and the artery of Sylvius.
The manner in which Sylvius conducted his anatomical course is known to us by his own writings, by the testimony of Moreau[16], and by that of Vesalius[17]. Thus the course for the year 1535 began with the reading, by Sylvius, of Galen’s treatise De Usu Partium. When the middle of the first book was reached, Sylvius remarked that the subject was too difficult for his students to understand and that he would not plague his class with it. He then jumped to the fourth book, read all to the tenth book, discussed a part of the tenth and omitting the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth, he took up the fourteenth and the remaining three books. Thus he omitted all that Galen had said concerning the extremities. A second Galenic work which Sylvius used was the anatomico-physiologic treatise, De Musculorum Motu. Not infrequently the professor was unable to demonstrate in dissection the parts on which he had lectured. Thus, on one occasion, the students succeeded in finding the pulmonary and aortic valves which Sylvius had failed to find on the preceding day.
Joannes Guinterius of Andernach
Another famous member of the Paris Faculty of this period, and a man whose life-story reads like a romance, was Joannes Guinterius, the beggar of Deventer. Guinterius (Gonthier, Guinther, Guinter, Winter, or Winther), who is often called John Winter of Andernach, from the name of the town in which he was born, lived between the years 1487-1574, and rose to eminence in both the literary and the medical worlds. Born of humble parents, he was sent at an early age to the University of Utrecht. Leaving this institution because of his poverty, he went to Deventer where he was reduced to the necessity of begging in the streets. He drifted to the University of Marburg, and here displayed such brilliant talents that he soon obtained employment as a teacher in the small town of Goslar, in Brunswick. His growing reputation for learning led to his appointment to the chair of Greek in the noted University of Louvain.