GLISSON, FRANCIS, an English physician, born in 1597, at Rampisham, in the county of Dorset, was educated at Cambridge, and during forty years occupied the chair of medicine in that university. In 1634 he was admitted into the College of Physicians in London, of which he afterwards became president; and in 1639 this body appointed him professor of anatomy. He filled this situation with much credit at the commencement of the civil war, when he took refuge in Colchester; but after the surrender of that city to the parliamentary forces he went to London, and became a member of that association of learned men which afterwards formed the Royal Society.
Globe
||
Gloucester. thirty years before. In 1654 appeared his Anatomia Hepatis, in Svo, in which he first described the capsule of the vesa portarum, known by his name; in 1672 the Tractatus de natura substantiae energetica, seu de vita Natura cynque tribus primis facultatibus; and in 1677, the year of his death, the book De Ventriculo et Intestinali, in 4to, the first work containing conjectures as to the nature of the simple fibre, and an exposition of the innate principle of irritability. Glisson was also the first who attributed the contraction of the heart, and of the other muscles, to the action of a stimulus on their irritable principle. The greater part of his works have often been reprinted in different countries. He was also the author of a treatise De Lymphaductis nuper repertis, Amsterdam, 1659, which, with his book entitled Anatomica prologomena et Anatomia Hepatis, are considered the best of his works. Boerhaave regarded him as the most exact of all anatomists; but Glisson's views on physiology are now held in little estimation. (J. B.—E.)