William Harvey, Fabricius ab Acquapendente and the divide between medicine and surgery.

ical students in Canada submit their applications for specialty training. They have already announced their wishes to be either physicians or surgeons by their choice of elective rotations in the previous year, upon which, they correctly believe they will be judged during the interview process. The students will demonstrate, and the selectors will divine, the particular character required for success within their “house of medicine.” It may be surprising, therefore, for students and selectors to know that William Harvey (1578 – 1657), now considered the progenitor of the modern physician, chose the leading surgeon of his day as his teacher. Hieronymous Fabricius ab Acquapendente (1533 – 1619) was a professor of anatomy and surgery at the University of Padua in Italy (Fig. 1). In 1565, Fabricius succeeded Fallopius, successor himself of Vesalius, to the combined chair of anatomy and surgery at Padua. Fabricius had been the professor for 35 years by the time Harvey arrived, in 1600. Harvey owes his prominence in our medical hagiography to a series of lectures given by Sir William Osler to the students of Yale University almost 100 years ago. These lectures were collected and published not just as a history, but as an explanation for the evolution of modern medicine.1 Osler places Harvey’s life at the centre of this relatively short book, and on each side, he eruditely gallops from ancient to modern times. Osler’s gift for composition brings Harvey’s time in Padua to life. It has been estimated that 10 000 foreign students came to study with Fabricius over his career.2 It was difficult to get close to the teaching—only favoured senior students managed to assist the master by holding a candelabra over the dissection table. The students were housed according to their country of origin. Harvey became consiliarius of Natio Anglica and likely secured one of the favoured positions with Fabricius. The professor’s influence on a future father of medicine was profound. Fabricius had just completed a masterpiece on the functional anatomy of the sensory organs, De Visione, Voce et Auditu. Modern reviewers believe this was the first time that a renaissance anatomist moved from descriptive anatomy into an analysis of function.2 Harvey probably assisted Fabricius with his book on venous anatomy, De Venarum Osteolis. Late in life, Harvey told Robert Boyle that it was Fabricius’s description of venous valves that had put him on the path to describing circulation.1 It was also during Harvey’s time in Padua that Fabricius published his study of embryology, De Formato Foetu. In his own career, Harvey paid Fabricius the ultimate compliment by limitng his own research to the development of themes