Sylvius, a latinization of "de le Boë" translated as "of the woods", was born in Hanau, Germany to an affluent family originally from Cambrai, but worked and died in Netherlands. He studied medicine at the Protestant Academy of Sedan, and from 1632–1634 in Leiden under Adolph Vorstius and Otto Heurnius. In 1634 he held a disputation Positiones variae medicae under the presidency of Vorstius, in which he defended the proposition that there should be a pulmonary circulation. After that Sylvius made a study tour to Jena and Wittenberg, and on 16 March 1637 he defended a thesis entitled De animali motu ejusque laesionibus at the University of Basel under the presidency of Emmanuel Stupanus