These discoveries were further pursued by another learned physician, Galileo, who was born at Pisa in 1564. He entered the university there in 1581, and prosecuted his studies with such zeal and success, that in a very few years he became Professor of Mathematics. He now began his career as a teacher of the philosophy of Copernicus, and soon received unpleasant evidences that the disciple of truth must be ready to suffer. A congregation of cardinals, monks, and mathematicians of the old school, determined that his works were heretical and dangerous, and the holy inquisition sentenced him to prison. After remaining incarcerated some months he was taken before his judges, and required to renounce his errors, and with his hand upon the Gospel, to swear that they were sinful and detestable. Having performed this horrid penance, his conscience upbraided him, and as he rose from his knees, he exclaimed, “yet it does move,” for which relapse he was further sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. He continued thus secluded for many years, during which time blindness, deafness, and pains in his limbs embittered his existence, and death at length, more merciful than the Holy See, released him from his trials. Newton was born in the year in which this noble martyr died.
For the edification of the worshippers of the “good old times,” a few more instances of the loving kindness which prevailed may be acceptable.
The clerical sages of the University of Salamanca pronounced that the assertion of Christopher Columbus, that a continent existed beyond the seas, was blasphemous and feloniously wicked. A bishop of Salsburg expressing his belief in the existence of the antipodes was denounced by the bishop of Mentz as a dangerous heretic, and committed to the flames.
Bigotry, however, is not confined to any one creed, since we know that Calvin the reformer, a man who had suffered persecution without learning mercy, no sooner found himself invested with the power to punish the freedom of thought in which he had himself indulged, than he persecuted to death the learned physician, Michael Servetus, not for any immoral proclivity, but because he believed him to be unsound on the doctrine of the Trinity. Servetus took the degree of Doctor of Medicine at the University of Paris about the year 1535. He is the author of some medical treatises on the circulation of the blood, and also translated Ptolemy’s geography; he was for some time in constant correspondence with Calvin, but as the “Odium theologicum” is the bitterest, Calvin shewed his christian charity by causing his antagonist to be consigned to the flames.
But I must hasten forward, Fallopius looms in the distance, and with him our medical celebrities come fast and numerous. Gabriel Fallopius was born at Modena about the year 1523, and was one of the great triad of anatomists in Italy who, at the close of the 16th century, laid the foundation of the modern science of anatomy. Fallopius succeeded Vesalius in the chair of anatomy and surgery at Padua in 1557. His career was brilliant but short, and he died in 1562. It should be mentioned that Fallopius shared the usual fate of great discoverers; his originality was disputed, and his learning questioned; but it has been always so, and in appreciating the works of our predecessors, we must keep in view the enormous difficulties by which every onward step, whether in art or science, is beset:
“Envy doth merit, as its shade pursue.”
truth does indeed ultimately prevail, but too frequently the heart of the discoverer is broken before the obtuseness of the mediocrities in power, by whom it is obstructed, can be overcome.
Although a little diverging from the strict chronological order, I must here introduce to you our old acquaintance, Paracelsus; this eccentric genius had too little virtue to be admired, and too much talent to be despised. He was born at Zurich, in Switzerland, in 1493, and was consequently contemporary with many more learned, but less celebrated men; an unblushing and presumptuous egotist, he presents himself, in a moral point of view, as the exact antithesis of the amiable and virtuous Hippocrates. That he made some very useful discoveries must be granted to him; he introduced the use of opium into Germany, and was the first practitioner who employed preparations of mercury, antimony, sulphur, iron, and other remedies.
Van Helmont is the most indulgent of his biographers, and Lord Bacon the most severe; but perhaps the description given by Zimmerman comes nearest the truth—“Paracelsus burnt publicly at Bàle the works of Galen, Avicenna, and other eminent predecessors, because, he said, ‘they knew nothing of the cabballa and magic,’ which lay at the root of all medical and natural laws. He undertook to cure all diseases by the use of certain words and charms. He enjoined secresy on his disciples, and certainly was the first great quack from whom the numerous band of Charlatans have proceeded.”
He has left his mantle behind him, and his descendants, with none of his brains, have largely inherited his presumption. On the occasion of his inauguration in the Chair of Medicine, he thus expresses himself:—