Background

Jacques Dubois, also known as Jacobus Sylvius in Latin, was born c. 1478 in Amiens, France, the seventh in a family of fifteen. His father was a weaver. He came to Paris at the invitation of his brother François, professor at and principal of the Collège de Tournai.

Education

Dubois acquired a good command of Greek and Latin and was particularly attracted to the medical writings of Hippocrates and Galen. He studied medicine informally with members of the Paris Faculty of Medicine at Sorbonne, and particularly anatomy with Jean Tagault, whom he later described as “mihi in re medica praeceptor.”

Prevented from having any sort of medical career by lack of a degree, Dubois went to Montpellier, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine degree in 1529 and Doctor of Medicine degree in 1530. Upon returning to Paris, he was incorporated Bachelor of Medicine in 1531, permitted to take the examinations for the degree of licentiate.

Career

Dubois was allowed to teach at the Collège de Tréguier; in 1536 the Faculty of Medicine gave recognition to his course by permitting him to lecture in the Faculty and to receive students’ fees.

Since Dubois was the arch-Galenist of Paris, wholly confident of Galen’s medical omniscience and determined at all costs to defend him against open, critical attack, he became intensely hostile to his former student upon publication of Vesalius’ Fahrica (1543).

Dubois’ most bitter attack, which appeared under the title of Vaesani cuiusdam calumniarum in Hippocratis Galenique rent anatomicam depttlsio (1551), was so unrestrainedly abusive that Renatus Henerus, in his later defense of Vesalius, Adversus Jacobi Sylvii depulsionum anatomicarum calumnias pro Andrea Vesalio apologia (1555), declared that Dubois’ invective “wearied our ears and aroused the indignation of many of us.” Despite such irascibility, Sylvius was genuinely concerned over the welfare of his more orthodox students, for whom he wrote Victus ratio scholasticis pauperibus partu facilis & salubris (1540) and Conseil tresulile contre la famine & remedes d’icelle (1546).

Dubois was a prolific writer of commentaries, of which the following were the most frequently reprinted and the most influential: Methodus sex libronim Galeni in dijferentiis et causis morborum el symptomatum (1539), Methodus medicamenta componendi (1541), Morborum internorum prope omnium curatio ex Galeno et Marco Gattinaria (1548), and De febribus commentarius ex Hippocrate et Galeno (1555).

His major contribution to anatomy is represented by the posthumous In Hippocratis et Galeniphysiologiae partem anatomicam isagoge (1555). It is a systematic account of anatomy, written at some time after 1536 (possibly in 1542) and based on the writings of Galen, on a certain amount of human anatomical dissection, and, as Sylvius admitted, on the Anatomiae liber introductorius (1536) of Niccolo Massa, a Venetian physician and anatomist.

As a self-appointed defender of Galenic anatomy, Dubois could not, like Vesalius, call attention openly to Galen’s errors in the course of presenting more nearly correct anatomical descriptions in his Isagoge. His procedure was therefore to acknowledge the best of Galenic anatomy; to describe without critical comment such anatomical structures as Galen had overlooked or, where Galen had permitted an alternative, to make a better choice; and if necessary, to criticize not Galen but the human structure, which Dubois declared to have degenerated and thus to have betrayed Galen’s earlier, correct descriptions.

Galen described the passage of blood by the pulmonary artery, although he considered it of lesser importance than the one that he proposed through “pores” in the cardiac septum. Dubois, however, does not refer to the latter route or to the implications of his silence - which perhaps he did not realize, for in effect they denied Galenic cardiovascular physiology. Furthermore, he did not accept the standard existence of the rete mirabile in the human brain: “This plexus seen by Galen under the gland still appears today in brutes.” Thus he suggests that through degeneration the rete mirabile had disappeared from the human structure. In summation, the Isagoge may be described as an introduction to human anatomy based on an attempt to reconcile the best of classical teachings with the results of observation, direct or at second hand, of human dissection.

Dubois died in Paris and was interred in the Cemetery of the Poor Scholars.

Achievements

• Jacques Dubois’ systematic presentation is worthy of commendation, as is his relatively modern method of numbering branches of vessels, structures, and relationships. Notably, he provided a clear scheme for the identification of muscles, based on their attachments. It has been called the foundation of modern muscle nomenclature.
  
  Relative to this contribution, Dubois introduced and popularized a number of other anatomical terms that have persisted, such as crural, cystic, gastric, popliteal, iliac, and mesentery. Further examples of his method and contributions are to be found in his description of the heart, where, perhaps influenced by Massa as well as by his own dissections, Dubois describes the passage of blood by the pulmonary artery from the right ventricle to the lungs and thence to the left ventricle.
  
  

Works

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  • Methodus Sex Librorum Galeni in Differentiis Et Causis Morborum Et Symptomatum, in Tabellas Fex Ordine Suo Coniecta Paulò Fusios, Ne Breuitas Obscura ... Insalubribus, Et Neutris 1539
  • Ordo Et Ordinis Ratio in Legendis Hippocratis Et Galeni Libris 1539
  • Methodus Medicamenta Componendi, Ex Simplicibus Iudicio Summo Delectis & Arte Certa Paratis, Quatuor Libris Distributa 1541
  • De Febribus Commentarius 1554
  • In Hippocratis Et Galeni Physiologiæ Partem Anatomicam Isagoge, À Iacobo Sylvio Rei Medicæ Apud Parrhisios Interprete Regio Conscripta, Et in Libros Tres Distributa 1555
  • Commentarius in Claudii Galeni De ossibus ad Tyrones libellum 1556

Personality

Dubois was known for his hard work and eloquence. He was a very popular teacher of anatomy who, unlike many of his contemporaries, was not unwilling to perform his own dissections.

Connections

Brother:

François Dubois

fellow student:

Jean Tagault

Student:

Andreas Vesalius

Andreas Vesalius was Dubois' most distinguished student.

References

• Revue Des Bibliothèques, Volume 15
  1905