The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800

by Albert H. Buck

In 1556, complaints having reached the ears of Charles the Fifth to the effect that the sin of dissecting human corpses was greatly on the increase, this monarch decided to refer the question to the Theological Faculty of the University of Salamanca, in the northwestern part of Spain, for an authoritative opinion. The reply which these broad-minded theologians sent to the Emperor was most satisfactory. It is reported to have been expressed in the following words: “The dissection of human cadavers serves a useful purpose and is therefore permissible to Christians of the Catholic Church.” This decision did not of course put an immediate end to the harsh criticisms and petty persecutions of the bigots; but, as the years went by, it was noted that the work of scientific research in human anatomy and physiology acquired greater freedom of action, and it is fair to assume that this result was largely due to the famous decision to which I have just referred.

Shortly after Vesalius had retired, as stated above, from active participation in anatomical research work, he was called by Charles the Fifth to serve him in the capacity of private physician. During this service, which lasted for several years, he visited, in company with the Emperor, many of the principal cities of Europe; and then, when the latter abdicated the throne of Spain,—for Charles was not only Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire but also King of Spain,—Vesalius became the private physician of Philip the Second, Charles’ son and successor on the Spanish throne. This long period is largely a blank in the history of Vesalius. Toward the end he got into trouble with the Inquisition and was obliged, as a means of escaping the punishment of death, to undertake a voyage to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. While he was in that city he received an official invitation from the Senate at Venice to fill the Chair of Anatomy at Padua. He then at once turned his steps toward Italy, doubtless very happy over the prospect of once more engaging in anatomical work; but he was shipwrecked on the coast of the Island of Zante, October 2, 1564. Thirteen days later, before he had completed his fiftieth year, he died from starvation and exposure. A memorial tablet was placed in one of the neighboring churches on the island, and in 1847 his Belgian compatriots erected a suitable monument to his memory in the city of Brussels.

Admirable as was Vesalius’ treatise on human anatomy, it was soon discovered that it was deficient in certain particulars. Not a few of the descriptions, for example, were incomplete, and there were also a number of parts or organs for which no descriptions whatever had been provided. Many of these deficiencies were supplied by contemporary anatomists, nearly all of whom were Italians. First and foremost among this secondary but yet very important group of laborers in the field of original research work, the names of Fallopius and Eustachius deserve to be mentioned.

Gabriele Fallopius, who was born in Modena in 1523, was appointed to the Chair of Anatomy at Ferrara when he was only twenty-four years of age. Subsequently he taught at the University of Pisa. At the time of his death in 1563 he was Professor of Anatomy, Surgery and Botany at Padua. He made many important discoveries in anatomy, more particularly in relation to foetal osteology and the distribution of the blood-vessels. His work in the latter department is all the more remarkable from the fact that it was accomplished at a time when the art of injecting blood-vessels with some opaque material was unknown in Italy. His name has been perpetuated in connection with the Fallopian tube. As a man Fallopius was much liked because of his kindly disposition and absence of conceit. The only treatise which he published was that entitled “Observationes anatomicae,” Venice, 1561.

Bartholomaeus Eustachius, born at San Severino, in the Marches of Ancona, in the early part of the sixteenth century, was one of the most distinguished physicians of his day. He taught anatomy at the famous University of Sapienza at Rome, and devoted a great deal of time and thought to the preparation of a large work which was to bear the title “On the Dissensions and Controversies Relating to Anatomy”; but death overtook him before he had completed this undertaking. It appears, however, that in 1564—that is, ten years before he died—he published a smaller work containing separate chapters on the kidneys, the organ of hearing, the movements of the head, the vena azygos, the vena profunda of the arm, and on certain questions relating to osteology; and he introduced, as illustrations for the text, eight plates of octavo size. These plates and thirty-eight others, which were to have served as illustrations for the great work, were all completed as early as during the year 1552. The artist Pini, who made the drawings that served as the originals from which the plates were made, was related in some degree to Eustachius, and upon the latter’s death the metal plates became his property by inheritance. But nothing further was heard of them until they were discovered, early in the eighteenth century, by Lancisi, the Pope’s attending physician, in the possession of Pini’s descendants. They were published for the first time in 1714. Haeser says that these pictures are true to nature, but that in artistic merit they are not equal to those which belong to the treatise published by Vesalius. The name Eustachius is permanently connected with the channel which leads from the tympanum to the nasal cavities—the Eustachian tube.

Only the briefest possible mention may here be made of those anatomists who, following immediately in the footsteps of the three great leaders mentioned above, played parts of greater or less importance in building up the science of anatomy. Each one of them did creditable work in correcting the errors made by their predecessors or in supplying descriptions of structures or structural relations which these pioneers had overlooked. Thus, long before the sixteenth century came to an end, the gross anatomy of the human being had attained a large measure of the completeness which it possesses to-day. The names of some of the more prominent men among those to whom I have just referred are the following: Giovanni Filippo Ingrassia, Matthaeus Realdus Columbus, Julius Caesar Arantius, Constantius Varolius, Volcher Koyter and Hieronymus Fabricius ab Acquapendente.

Ingrassia (1510–1580), a Sicilian physician, cultivated osteology assiduously, and is entitled to special credit for having first described the stapes, the third one of the ossicles of hearing, and for having made valuable contributions to our knowledge of epidemic diseases. He was a professor in the University of Naples, and, after the year 1563, held the position of Archiater in Palermo, Sicily. His descriptions of the different bones of the skeleton were made with such care and thoroughness that later anatomists found very little for them to discover or to alter.

Matthaeus Realdus Columbus (or simply Realdus Columbus), who died in 1559, was born in Cremona, Northern Italy. He served for some time as Prosector to Vesalius at Padua, and then succeeded him in the Chair of Anatomy, first at Padua and afterward at Pisa. The last teaching position which he held was that of Professor of Anatomy in Rome, in which city he counted Michael Angelo among his intimate friends. The discoveries which he made in anatomy were quite numerous and of considerable importance, and his descriptions were distinguished by an unusual degree of accuracy and clearness. Unfortunately, he did not hesitate, at the same time, to exalt the value of his own work by disparaging that of his famous teacher.

Arantius, who also was one of the pupils of Vesalius, occupied the Chair of Anatomy in his native city of Bologna during the latter half of the century. His death occurred in 1589. The particular department in which he gained considerable fame was that of the foetus, the placenta, the uterus, etc. His descriptions of these structures are written with very great care. Blumenbach gives him credit for having been the first anatomist to furnish a description of the pregnant uterus in its different stages. His earliest published work bears the title “De humano foetu opusculum” Rome, 1564.

Constantinus Varolius, whose name is imperishably connected with that part of the brain which is known as the “Pons Varolii,” was born in Bologna in 1543. He was appointed Professor of Anatomy in the Academy of his native city at an early age, and soon distinguished himself by the careful studies which he made of the human brain and nervous system in general. Before his untimely death at the age of thirty-two he was chosen the attending physician of Pope Gregory the Thirteenth. His earliest published work bears the title “De nervis opticis, etc., epistola,” Padua, 1573.