Biology and Its Makers / With Portraits and Other Illustrations

by William A. Locy

Fig. 7.—Initial letters from Vesalius's Fabrica of 1543.

The Fabrica of Vesalius was a piece of careful, honest work, the moral influence of which must not be overlooked. At any moment in the world's history, work marked by sincerity exercises a wholesome influence, but at this particular stage of intellectual development such work was an innovation, and its significance for progress was wider and deeper than it might have been under different circumstances.

Opposition to Vesalius.—The beneficent results of his efforts were to unfold afterward, since, at the time, his utterances were vigorously opposed from all sides. Not only did the ecclesiastics contend that he was disseminating false and harmful doctrine, but the medical men from whom he might have expected sympathy and support violently opposed his teachings.

Many amusing arguments were brought forward to discredit Vesalius, and to uphold the authority of Galen. Vesalius showed that in the human body the lower jaw is a single bone—that it is not divided as it is in the dog and other lower mammals, and, as Galen had taught, also in the human subjects. He showed that the sternum, or breast bone, has three parts instead of eight; he showed that the thigh bones are straight and not curved, as they are in the dog. Sylvius, his old teacher, was one of his bitterest opponents; he declared that the human body had undergone changes in structure since the time of Galen, and, with the object of defending the ancient anatomist, "he asserted that the straight thigh bones, which, as every one saw, were not curved in accordance with the teaching of Galen, were the result of the narrow trousers of his contemporaries, and that they must have been curved in their natural condition, when uninterfered with by art!"

The theologians also found other points for contention. It was a widely accepted dogma that man should have one less rib on one side, because from the Scriptural account Eve was formed from one of Adam's ribs. This, of course, Vesalius did not find to be the case. It was also generally believed at this time that there was in the body an indestructible resurrection-bone which formed the nucleus of the resurrection-body. Vesalius said that he would leave the question of the existence of such a bone to be decided by the theologians, as it did not appear to him to be an anatomical question.

The Court Physician.—The hand of the church was heavy upon him, and the hatred shown in attacks from various quarters threw Vesalius into a state of despondency and anger. In this frame of mind he destroyed manuscripts upon which he had expended much labor. His disappointment in the reception of his work probably had much to do in deciding him to relinquish his professorship and accept the post of court physician to Charles V of the United Kingdoms of Spain and Belgium. After the death of Charles, he remained with Philip II, who succeeded to the throne. Here he waxed rich and famous, but he was always under suspicion by the clerical powers, who from time to time found means of discrediting him. The circumstances of his leaving Spain are not definitely known. One account has it that he made a post-mortem examination of a body which showed signs of life during the operation, and that he was required to undertake a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to clear his soul of sacrilege. Whether or not this was the reason is uncertain, but after nineteen years at the Spanish Court he left, in 1563, and journeyed to Jerusalem. On his return from Palestine he suffered shipwreck and died from the effects of exposure on Zanti, one of the Ionian Islands. It is also said that while on this pilgrimage he had been offered the position of professor of anatomy as successor to Fallopius, who had died in 1563, and that, had he lived, he would have come back honorably to his old post.

Eustachius and Fallopius.—The work of two of his contemporaries, Eustachius and Fallopius, requires notice. Cuvier says in his Histoire des Sciences Naturelles that those three men were the founders of modern anatomy. Vesalius was a greater man than either of the other two, and his influence was more far-reaching. He reformed the entire field of anatomy, while the names of Eustachius and Fallopius are connected especially with a smaller part of the field. Eustachius described the Eustachian tube of the ear and gave especial attention to sense organs; Fallopius made special investigations upon the viscera, and described the Fallopian tube.

Fallopius was a suave, polite man, who became professor of anatomy at Padua; he opposed Vesalius, but his attacks were couched in respectful terms.

Eustachius, the professor of anatomy at Rome, was of a different type, a harsh, violent man, who assailed Vesalius with virulence. He corrected some mistakes of Vesalius, and prepared new plates on anatomy, which, however, were not published until 1754, and therefore did not exert the influence upon anatomical studies that those of Vesalius did.