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Vieussens is shown in the illustration of the base of the skull, taken from his Neurographia Universalis, published in 1684. The book is notable for the detailed copperplate engravings, and it has been compared to Willis’s Cerebri Anatome. Indeed Willis was one of the influences on Vieussens, as was Nicolaus Steno (1638-1686). He is noted more for his anatomy than for his physiology, which reflects both Descartes’s mechanistic and Sylvius’s iatrochemical theories.