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. In 1650 he published his treatise *De Rochitide, seu morbo puerili*, a malady then new in England, where it had only appeared about thirty years before. In 1654 appeared his *Anatomia Repertis*, in which he first described the capsule of the vein perforum, known by his name; in 1672 the *Tractatus de natura substantiae cerebralis, seu de vita Natura eorumque tribus primae foundationis*; and in 1677, the year of his death, the book *De Ventriculo et Intestinis*. In 1690, the fifth work containing observations as to the nature of the skin fibre, and an exposition of the innate principle of irritability. Glisson was also the first who attributed the sensation 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 Lymphoconduits super repertis*, Amsterdam, 1652, which, with his book entitled *Anatomicae prolegomena at 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.