The treatise in which Villanovanus came before the public in his new capacity of physician was on the practical use of the class of medicines known in those days by the title of Syrups—sweetened decoctions or infusions of different kinds, still in vogue among the French under the name of Tisanes. These syrups appear to have been one of the bones of contention between the two parties, though neither was perfectly agreed in itself as to the indications for their use or of the principles on which they were to be prescribed. This question does not interest us here, and so we leave it; but we turn to the work of Michael Villanovanus for intimations in its style of the intellectual and moral nature of its author.
In his address to the reader he says, ‘I should not have proposed, most learned reader, to take on my weak shoulders this weighty and so much disputed province of the healing art, had I not felt me forced, against my will as it were, to lend my aid in furthering medical studies by a fair defence of Galenical doctrine, and more especially still by my love of truth.... I think it will be found that I have conciliated Galen so far with my own views as to dispel any doubts I may have had of a favourable award, if I have only an equitable judge in my reader. Of this, at all events, I feel well assured that no studious person who carefully weighs what is here set forth will repent him of his reading.’ This is not amiss from a Doctor of a year’s standing! But it is in his Preface to the work that Michael Villanovanus, as we apprehend him, comes still more particularly before us. Aware, as he says, of the fate that so often befals the meddler in a quarrel not his own, and displaying a commendable amount of caution, not without a spice of mock modesty, our author is here considerate enough to tell us that ‘he does not intend to offer himself as censor in the controversy, between the Galenists and Averrhoists, and by finding something to object to in the conclusions of each, to have them both fall foul of him as an enemy;’ after which he proceeds, characteristically still, to say, ‘but that I may not withhold from others that which I possess myself and gratefully acknowledge, which may be of use to my fellow men, I throw aside fear and proclaim what I believe to be the truth.’
The ‘Syruporum Universa Ratio,’ or general Rationale of Syrups, is in truth a very learned little book, extremely well written; much of it, as becomes the young practitioner, having reference to the writings of predecessors of the highest authority in medical science. Hippocrates and Galen, above all others, are freely quoted, and their views discussed, for Servetus was ‘nothing if not critical,’ and a variorum reading or two to show his scholarship is proposed. But he also refers to Avicenna, not thinking it amiss to learn of the enemy, and to Paul of Aegina, Monardus and others, by which he proclaims the extent of his reading, and his readiness to imbibe knowledge at every source.
I looked with interest for some physiological hint or statement in this book, on Syrups or Diet drinks, that might have heralded the brilliant exposition contained in the latest product of his genius—the Christianismi Restitutio or Restoration of Christianity—concerning the way in which the blood from the right reaches the left ventricle of the heart through the lungs, but in vain. We must presume nevertheless that he was already possessed of the anatomical facts on which his later induction is founded. The only physiological reference I discovered in the book on Syrups was to the Mesentery as giving origin to the veins—a step in advance of his predecessors, with whom the liver was the source as it was also the laboratory of the blood, as the veins were the channels for its distribution to the body.
It is not uninteresting, however, to observe the same tendency towards unity or oneness here, in the domain of positive knowledge, which we discover pervading Servetus’s other works that lose themselves in the realm of metaphysical abstraction. He will not acknowledge two or any greater number of concoctions or digestions, whether in health or disease, such as were generally admitted in his day. The processes that take place in disease he declares to be of the same nature, though they are perverted, as those that occur in the healthy body. Diseases are therefore nothing more than perversions of natural functions, not new entities introduced into the body; a conclusion which, on physiological grounds, he sums up in these words: ‘The rationale in the maturation of disease and in the digestion of the food is one and the same.’[46]
CHAPTER XII.
THE MEDICAL FACULTY OF PARIS SUE VILLANOVANUS FOR LECTURING ON JUDICIAL ASTROLOGY.
Servetus’s fate on starting in life was opposition; and how should it have been otherwise?—he found himself through superior endowment and higher culture antagonistic to almost all he saw around him in the world. We have already had him met as a trespasser on their domain by the Reformers of Basle and Strasburg, and we have now to find him looked on as an intruder by the Medical Faculty of Paris. The lecturer on Geography and Astrology had attracted a large amount of public attention, and the author of the book on Syrups began to get into vogue as a practitioner of medicine. The book had in fact been as well received as the lectures; it was extensively read, much commended at the time, and reprinted oftener than once in after years. No wonder, therefore, that Michel Villeneuve M.D. had now as many eyes upon him in Paris as Michael Servetus had had in other days in Switzerland. Before he could well look about him, the whole faculty of Physicians and the heads of the University of Paris were in array against him.
It seems that he had gone out of his way in his lectures to say something disrespectful of the doctors, his contemporaries, accusing them of ignorance of many things necessary to the successful practice of their profession, particularly of Astronomy, or more properly Astrology, a science in which Villeneuve plumed himself as being a master. The doctors naturally enough complained of such impropriety, and had him cited before their council. There he was told that something more of respectful bearing was due from him to men who had been his masters; and above all that he was transgressing the boundaries of true science and common sense in making so much of Astrology. The Dean of the Faculty is even said to have had him several times privately before him, and warned him of the difficulties he would inevitably fall into, if he continued casting nativities and prescribing for the ailments of his patients from the aspects of the stars; for this, it appears, was the principal element in his medical practice. Servetus, unhappily for himself, was not one of those who could take even friendly advice in good part. As credulous as he was sceptical, and believing implicitly in himself and in stellar influences, he not only made no submission, but said that his ill-wishers should rue their opposition.
The doctors on their part not only gave no heed to his threats, but publicly denounced him from their chairs as an impostor and wind-bag; with the consequence of arousing him to self-defence, and with his ready pen setting him to work upon a pamphlet, in which he did not fail to lay bare some of the sore places in the persons of his adversaries, characterising them as mannerless and unlettered, and even holding them up in their ignorance as very pests of society. Once in the hands of the printer, Villeneuve’s purpose to expose his detractors through the dreaded press became known; and such alarm does his meditated attack appear to have excited that the Faculty of Physicians, calling the Senate of the University to their side, petitioned the Parliament of Paris to forbid the publication of the pamphlet, as well as to interdict its author from continuing to lecture on Astrology, which they now characterised as Divination.