Andreas Andrea Cesalpino (Caesalpinijs), an Italian physician and naturalist, born at Arezzo in 1519, died in Rome, Feb. 23, 1603. He was for a time professor of botany in the university of Pisa, and was afterward called to Rome by Clement VIII. to be chief physician to the pope and professor of medicine in the Sapienza college, which positions he retained till his death. He published works upon botany, mineralogy, medicine, and the highest questions of philosophy. His philosophical speculations are contained mainly in his Quces-tiones Peripateticae. In his first publication, Speculum Artis Medicos, Hippocraticum, he showed his knowledge of the system of the circulation of the blood. The following passage is from the second chapter of its first book: "For in animals we see that the nutriment is carried through the veins to the heart as to a laboratory, and its last perfection being there attained, it is driven by the spirit which is begotten in the heart through the arteries and distributed to the whole body." The system accepted since the time of Harvey could hardly be more definitely or accurately stated. He was styled by Linna3us the first orthodox or systematic botanist, and his work on plants was a handbook to Linna3us in all his classifications.

Botany in the time of Csesalpinus was the popular witchcraft; as a science, it consisted in a mass of erudition about the marvellous but imaginary virtues of plants. Caasalpinus sought successfully to transfer it from the realm of magic to that of science. He proposed the basis of classification upon which the whole system of Linnasus rests, namely, the distinction of plants in their parts of fructification, and defined many classes and orders as they remain in the Linnsean arrangement.