manner of their time, their first missiles were epithets; and, the almost infinite magazine of these having been exhausted, they began to use sharper weapons—weapons theologic.
At first the theologic weapons failed. A conference of divines having been asked to decide whether dissection of the human body is sacrilege, gave a decision in the negative. The reason is simple; Charles V. had made Vesalius his physician, and could not spare him. But, on the accession of Philip II. of Spain, the whole scene changed. That most bitter of bigots must of course detest the great innovator.
A new weapon was now forged. Vesalius was charged with dissecting living men,[1] and, either from direct persecution, as the great majority of authors assert, or from indirect influences, as the recent apologists for Philip II. allow, Vesalius became a wanderer. On a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to atone for his sin, he was shipwrecked, and in the prime of his life and strength he was lost to this world.
And yet not lost. In this century he again stands on earth. The painter Hamann has again given him to us. By the magic of Hamann's pencil, we look once more into Vesalius's cell. Its windows and doors, bolted and barred within, betoken the storm of bigotry which rages without; the crucifix, toward which he turns his eyes, symbolizes the spirit in which he labors. The corpse of the plague-stricken, over which he bends, ceases to be repulsive; his very soul seems to send forth rays from the canvas which strengthen us for the good fight in this age.[2]
He was hunted to death by men who conscientiously supposed that he was injuring religion. His poor, blind foes destroyed one of religion's greatest apostles. What was his influence on religion? He substituted for repetition, by rote, of worn-out theories of dead men, conscientious and reverent searching into the works of the living-God. He substituted for representations of the human structure—pitiful and unreal—truthful representations, revealing the Creator's power and goodness in every line.[3]
I hasten now to the most singular struggle and victory of medical science between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Early in the last century, Boyer presented Inoculation as a preventive of small-pox, in France; thoughtful physicians in England, led by Lady Montagu and Maitland, followed his example.
Theology took fright at once on both sides of the Channel. The
- ↑ For a similar charge against anatomical investigations at a much earlier period, see Littré, "Médecine et Médecins," chapter on anatomy.
- ↑ The original painting of Vesalius at work in his cell, by Hamann, is now at Cornell University.
- ↑ For a curious example of weapons drawn from Galen and used against Vesalius, see Lewes, "Life of Goethe," p. 343, note. For proofs that I have not over-estimated Vesalius, see Portal, ubi supra. Portal speaks of him as "le génie le plus droit qu'eut l'Europe" and again, "Vesale me paraît un des plus grands hommes qui ait existé."
