For my part, therefore, so far from blaming Vesalius because he had dissected a living man, I should have accorded him most profound reverence for this proof of elevation above ordinary prejudice. And the more I thought over the matter, the more I became convinced that the accusation was well founded, that the deed had really been performed, which moral cowardice alone induced the glorious criminal to disavow.
My brooding fancy, satiated with the image of the great anatomist, began to occupy itself with his so-called victim. Who was he? what motive had induced him to surrender his body to the scalpel of the master, his life to the realization of the master’s idea? A slave, a debtor, from whom the ingenious savant had thus exacted a pound of flesh? A trembling poltroon, forced to the sacrifice more reluctantly than Isaac to the altar? I preferred rather to believe that it was a favorite pupil, burning with enthusiasm for the master, joyful to participate in his mighty labors at the cheap expense of his own lesser life. Had Vesalius been a general, and he an aide-de-camp before a rampart, all the world would have applauded him, rushing upon death at the word of command. I myself had known, by a brief experience, the thrilling impulse to fight, to die, in behalf of a cause. Rivers of blood had been shed for honor, for loyalty, for patriotism. Was the desire for truth less ardent than these worn-out passions! Could it not rather supply their place in the new world about to be created by science? What could produce a greater impression upon the entire world, and more forcibly announce the inauguration of a new era, than the voice of a man who should declare, “I refuse to draw my sword for the hideous folly of war; to surrender my life at the absurd caprice of princes; but I offer myself cheerfully, unreservedly, as the instrument of Science, in her majestic schemes for the discovery of truth!”
My recent studies on the problem of the heart’s movements brought me into peculiar sympathy with the object of Vesalius’ researches. The tantalizing results as often obtained by experiments on lower animals, the uncertainty of the inferences that could be deduced from them to form a theory of the human organism, had often excited in me a lively desire for a direct experiment upon man. This desire had hitherto been smothered beneath the mass of conventional ideas, which so frequently overwhelm our timidity and enslave our feebleness in endless routine. But the daring word of genius had now struck the chains from my intellect, and emancipated me from the slavery of that hesitation. I—I would follow in the path already traced by that bolder mind; I would redeem that calumniated memory from disgrace, and enrich its glory by the surpassing realization of the original conception. I would inaugurate the new era; I would set the example of supreme heroism in science; and all the world, and all future ages, should preserve my name with reverent homage, and enwreath it with laurels of undying fame. For, that the purity of my motives might be above suspicion, I would perform the experiment, not as Vesalius in the capacity of anatomist, but as the victim, voluntarily devoting himself to the transcendent interests of an ideal cause.
And as my mind leaped up into this grand thought, I felt cheek and brow flush with violent emotion. Carried along by the first impetus of the idea, I walked as rapidly as in a dream, unseeing, unhearing every thing that surrounded me. Before I knew whither I had come, I felt a cool wind blow over me, as if after a feverish journey on a heated road, I had suddenly stepped into a cool, dark cavern. And, looking out from the brilliant visions in which I was plunged, I found myself already entered within the gates of Père la Chaise—the city of the dead, of the vast majority to which I was to go over in fulfilment of my great idea. I wandered among the graves, and read the epitaphs, the reiterated dreary expressions of disappointment and despair, that the deceased had been passively torn from a world to which every fibre of their hearts was clinging. Not so would read my epitaph, and I began to compose it, less as a witty amusement than as a device for resisting an insidious chill that had begun to creep over me like a damp exhalation from the graves. For my imagination suddenly pictured to itself the heavy tombstone pressing down, down forever, on the cruel coffin-lid beneath which I should be lying. I shuddered at the picture, I shuddered at death, and, leaning on an iron rail which girt in a tomb, hid my face in my arms to shut out the signs of decay and the more ghastly emblems of immortality with which the populous cimetière was crowded.
Raising my head after a brief struggle, I perceived that I was standing in front of the famous tomb of Abelard and Heloise. The sculptured forms of the unhappy lovers reposed side by side on the lid of the stone mausoleum, as they had lain for six centuries, and immortalized the mingling of their mortal dust below. Tears sprang to my eyes as I looked at their still, peaceful faces, for I remembered my dead wife, and then, my lost children. Death, that contained them in its hollow caverns, could not be frightful to me. It was rather the treasure-house of all I possessed most precious, and which I should now hasten to reclaim. All the loneliness and longing which had been dulled by habit, and lately covered over by mental activity, awoke, and cried out passionately within me, repelling the slight pleasures of this world, as a child crying for its mother dashes aside an offered toy. What was left to me in life that I should cling to it? What ties bound me to this perfidious, slippery earth? To whom owed I any duties? Whose pillow would moisten with tears because I had passed out of sight? Destitute of personal interests, I could only devote myself to those of humanity, and that by some method that should concentrate in a single moment both the achievement and its reward. For small were the enjoyment to survive for fame, with whose report I could return laden to no fireside, for whose sake I could watch no eyes brighten in sweet pride of sympathy. I should sicken of it in half an hour, and my hard-earned laurels would become as dusty and lifeless as those ghastly wreaths of immortelles hanging around Heloise’s tomb. So desolated love joined itself to restless ambition and ideal enthusiasm, to concentrate my life for the purpose from which, since then, it has never swerved.
Thus resolved upon self-devotion, I set about the task of finding a colleague to share the risks and glory of my enterprise. I did not conceal from myself that upon him would devolve a rôle far more difficult and complicated than my own. From me, the subject of the proposed experiment, was only required sublime heroism for the sacrifice. But the man who should perform the operation must possess moral courage to face public criticism, perhaps opprobrium; a trained intellect, already habituated to discussion of the problem in question, and impassioned for its solution; great practical skill and finesse, able to appreciate and profit by every detail of the phenomena that would unroll themselves before his observation; iron nerve, that should remain unmoved by any startling peculiarities of the case in hand.
The necessity for uniting so many characteristics, compelled me to abandon my first hope of forming a committee for the experiment; for as soon as I began to sound physiologists on the subject, I landed knee-deep in a mass of invincible prejudices and prepossessions. The scheme was too new, too daring for the capacity of the mediocrities which constitute the bulk of even the scientific world. I must discover some exceptional solitary enthusiast like myself, able to appreciate and embrace with joy the grand opportunity I offered him. To the search for this enthusiast, therefore, I bent all my energies, and knocked at many doors, wherever, through the windows, I believed to have detected on the hearth the upleaping of an inner flame.
It was astonishing how often I knocked in vain! How often my insinuations, my suggestions, my direct propositions were repulsed! I appealed to a professor who had concentrated the best years of his life to the problem I proposed to solve,—he pooh-poohed my scheme. In vain I tried to explain my methods for overcoming its practical difficulties; he decried them all, I am convinced, from pure jealousy.
“And you ought to know by this time,” he added with a scarcely disguised sneer, “that a single experiment on a human subject would be of little value until its results were controlled by a dozen others. And I doubt that your enthusiasm would prove sufficiently contagious to furnish the supply for the dissecting table.” And he obstinately shut his ears to any further argument.