Sylvius was noted for his industry, for his eloquence, and above all for his avarice. It was the inordinate desire for money which led him to abandon philology for medicine. While studying under Tagault he began a course of medical lectures, explanatory of the works of Hippocrates and Galen, with such success that the Faculty of the University of Paris protested on the score that Sylvius was not a graduate. He then went to Montpellier, whose medical professors had long held a high position, where, according to Astruc, he received the doctor’s cap at the end of November, 1529. He was then above fifty years of age. Armed with this degree, he returned to Paris and immediately entered the lists as an independent medical teacher, but was again halted by the Faculty who ruled that he must first receive the Bachelor’s degree. This he gained on June 28, 1531. Sylvius then resumed his lectures with such success that his classes in the Collége de Tréguier numbered from four to five hundred, while Fernel, who was a professor in the Collége de Cornouailles, lectured to almost empty benches. In 1550, Henry the Second named Sylvius Professor of Medicine, as the successor of Vidus Vidius, in the recently established Collége de France. Sylvius died January 13, 1555, and was interred in the paupers’ cemetery as he had wished. Sylvius was not only an eloquent lecturer but he was also a demonstrative teacher. He was the first professor in France who taught anatomy from the human cadaver. In his lectures on botany he used a collection of plants to elucidate the subject. His chief fault was a blind reverence for ancient authors. He regarded Galen’s writings as gospel; if the cadaver presented structures unlike Galen’s description, the fault was not in the book but in the dead body, or, perchance, human structure had changed since Galen’s time! In one of his early books[12], Sylvius declared that Galen’s anatomy was infallible; that Galen’s treatise, _De Usu Partium_, was divine; and that further progress was impossible!