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François Dubois was known in his youth as Franciscus de le Boë, but after he received his medical degree he began to use the latinized form Franciscus Sylvius. His father left France on account of religious persecution and settled in Hanan, Germany, where Francis was born in 1614. He was sent to school in Sedan, and then after the fashion of the day he started on his travels through France, with a sojourn at Paris, then through the Netherlands and Germany. He studied physics, botany and zoology as well as chemistry and anatomy. When he was 23 years of age he reached Basel, where he was admitted to the profession of medicine, after which to returned to Hanan and practiced there for two years. But he needed a larger field for his activities, so he removed to Paris and later to Leyden. Here he began to teach anatomy.
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