Francis Glisson

Francis Glisson (1597 to 1677) was an English physician, anatomist and writer on medical subjects. Born in Bristol, he was educated in Rampisham, Dorset, and at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and was for forty years Regius Professor of Physic at Cambridge. He did important work on the anatomy of the liver, which gave rise to the medical eponym of the fibrous capsule of Glisson, and he wrote an early pediatric text on rickets. An experiment he performed helped debunk the balloonist theory of muscle contraction: he showed that when a muscle contracted under water the water level did not rise, so no air or fluid could be entering the muscle. He spent his later years in Covent Garden and died in London.