The century of Columbus

by James J. Walsh

The interests of the artists of the Renaissance in painting not merely the surface of things, but giving an idea of what they actually were, led to a great development of curiosity as to the constitution of human beings. Not a single great artist of the Renaissance failed to make dissections for himself, and the greater the artist, the more dissections, as a rule, we know he made. Michelangelo dissected portions at least of more than 100 bodies, and Leonardo da Vinci probably did even much more than that. He proposed at one time to write a [{364}] textbook of anatomy. Ordinarily, it would be presumed that any such proposition from an artist could scarcely be taken seriously in the sense of a scientific text-book to represent real contributions to anatomy as a science, though it might, of course, be valuable for artists. In recent years, however, the republication of the sketches of his dissections shows that Leonardo da Vinci might have written a very wonderful textbook of anatomy and that his plates are still valuable for the study of professed anatomists.

William Hunter declared that "Leonardo was the greatest anatomist of this period," and, as altogether we have some 750 separate sketches of dissections which he had actually studied, some idea of how much he accomplished can be obtained. These sketches represent not merely the muscles and the skeleton, though they give these very well and especially suggest their functions very completely, but they also contain sketches of all the viscera and even cross-sections of the brain at different planes. This book alone, without anything further, would give Leonardo a distinguished place in the history of physiology as well as of anatomy.

With all this in mind, it is amusing to know the impression rather prevalent among even educated people that there was Church opposition to dissection at this time, and to have such books as President White's "Warfare of Science with Theology" represent Vesalius a generation after this as dissecting in fear and trembling because of the danger he was incurring from the violation of ecclesiastical laws against dissection. No such laws were ever in existence, and dissection for scientific and artistic purposes was apparently much better provided for than it is even in our time, and above all much better cared for by the ecclesiastical authorities who might have hampered it so much, than it was in the English-speaking countries two or three generations ago, when ardent students of anatomy had either to "resurrect" bodies themselves or buy them--as many of them did--from "resurrectionists," with all the abuses connected with this practice, in order to secure anatomical material.

The supreme development of anatomy in Columbus' Century came with Vesalius. After exhibiting his trend of mind [{365}] towards scientific and especially biological studies as a boy by the dissection of small animals, the suggestion for which had come to him from the study of Albertus Magnus' books, Vesalius went to Paris in order to find opportunities for anatomical study; but while profiting not a little there, he was rather disappointed because of the lack of facilities. The jealousy of his teacher, Sylvius, which he aroused, made his work still more difficult, so he went down to Italy, where he knew that he could secure material for dissection and opportunities for study. There, before he was twenty-five, they made him professor of anatomy at the University of Padua, and he had the opportunity to write his great text-book on anatomy, the "De Fabrica Humani Corporis," which has remained a classic down to our day.

It would be rather difficult to enumerate all the discoveries that we owe to Vesalius. He well deserves the name of the Father of Modern Anatomy. Practically all of his productive life comes in Columbus' Century, and he illustrates how thorough the scientific men of the time were in their modes of thinking and ways of observation. Details that might have been expected to escape him are described most clearly. He was the first to point out that nerves penetrated muscles and to suggest the physiological function that they performed of bringing about contraction. He discovered the little blood vessels that enter bones, the nutrient arteries, but still more definitely described the nutrition of bones through the periosteum and its rich blood supply. He added greatly to the knowledge of the time as regards the anatomy of the abdominal wall and of the large organs of the abdominal cavity, especially the stomach and the liver. His descriptions of the sex organs are far in advance of all that his predecessors had known, and here his anatomical knowledge also became of value for suggestions in physiology,--the two cognate sciences were, as might be expected, developing together. Vesalius described the heart completely and suggested its mechanism, and yet could not get away from Galen's declaration that the blood passes through the septum of the heart. His description of blood vessels and their inner and outer coat shows how carefully his observations were made. He declared [{366}] afterwards that he was led to make these investigations by the memory of his dissection of the bladders with which he used to play as a boy and which he found to consist of several coats.

There is scarcely a department of anatomy on which Vesalius' name is not stamped deeply. He devoted great care, for instance, to the examination of the brain, emphasized the distinction between the gray and white matter, described the corpus callosum, the septum lucidum, the pineal gland and the corpora quadrigemina.

Two at least of Vesalius' disciples and assistants in teaching deserve to be named in the great development of anatomy that came at this time. One of them is Realdus Columbus, to whom we owe the discovery of the circulation of the blood in the lungs, and the other, Fallopius, whose name is familiar from its attachment to important structures in the body which he first described. Columbus we shall have more to say of under physiology, for the circulation of the blood was an important contribution to that science. Columbus' work was done at Rome, whither he was invited by the Popes to teach at the Papal Medical School, and where his directions and demonstrations were attended by cardinals, archbishops, and distinguished ecclesiastics. He had been Vesalius' prosector at Padua and had succeeded him at Bologna, and then was invited to Rome. He wrote a great text-book of anatomy, which was dedicated to Pope Paul IV, and it was one of the treasures of the Renaissance both because of the development of anatomy which it represents, and its value as one of the early beautifully printed and illustrated books of the medicine of this time.

Fallopius, the gifted pupil of Vesalius, of whom Haeser, the modern historian of medicine, has said that he was "one of the most important of the many-sided physicians of the sixteenth century," followed his master's work, corrected some details of it and added many new facts. We are not quite sure of the time of his birth, but he was probably less than thirty, perhaps only twenty-five, when he became professor of anatomy at Ferrara. He subsequently occupied the chair of anatomy at Pisa, and later of anatomy and surgery at Padua. He [{367}] added much to what was known before about the internal ear and described in detail the tympanum and its relations to the osseous ring in which it is situated. He also described minutely the circular and oval windows and their communication with the vestibule and cochlea. He was the first to point out the connection between the mastoid cells and the middle ear. His description of the lachrymal passages in the eye was a marked advance on those of his predecessors, and he also gave a detailed account of the ethmoid bone and its cells in the nose. His contributions to the anatomy of the bones and muscles were very valuable. It was in myology particularly that he corrected Vesalius. He studied the organs of generation in both sexes, and his description of the canal or tube which leads from the ovary to the uterus attached his name to the structure. Another discovery, the little canal through which the facial nerve passes after leaving the auditory, is also called after him the aquaeductus Fallopii.

Puschmann in his "History of Medical Education" says of Fallopius (p. 297): "He furnished valuable information upon the development of the bones and teeth, described the petrous bone more accurately, enriched myology by admirable descriptions of the muscles of the external ear, of the face, of the palate and of the tongue, made explicit statements upon the anastomotic connections of certain blood-vessels--for instance, of the carotid and vertebral arteries--and discovered the nervus trochlearis. He instituted accurate investigations upon particular parts of the organ of hearing and of the eye, by which he was able to give fuller information upon the ligamentum ciliare, the tunica hyaloidea, the lens, and other anatomical points."

As great, if not greater, than either as an anatomist was Eustachius, to whom we owe a series of important discoveries. He studied particularly the renal system and the head. His name is enshrined in the Eustachian tube named after him. It has been said that after Eustachius' time very little was added to our knowledge of the gross anatomy of the teeth. He also made important discoveries in brain anatomy. Unfortunately his text-book was never finished, and the beautiful illustrations, the first copperplates for an anatomical work ever made, were [{368}] not published in his lifetime. They were faithfully preserved, however, in the Library of the Vatican, for, like Columbus, he was a professor at the Papal Medical School in Rome, and were published at the beginning of the eighteenth century by Lancisi, himself, another Papal physician.