ies were
constantly on the watch to hamper, as far as possible at least, if not
absolutely to prevent, all anatomical investigation, and were even
ready to put to death those who violated the ecclesiastical
regulations in this matter. Dr. White, for instance, has made a great
hero of Vesalius for daring to do dissection. He was only doing what
hundreds of others were doing and had been doing in Italy for hundreds
of years; but to confess this would be to admit that the Church was
not opposed to anatomy or the practice of dissection, and so perforce
Vesalius must be a hero as well as the Father of Anatomy. To read Dr.
White's paragraph in the History of the Warfare of Science with
Theology, one cannot but feel sure that Vesalius must practically have
risked death over and over again in order to pursue his favorite
practice of dissection and his original researches in anatomy. I would
be the last one in the world to wish to minimize in any way Vesalius's
merits. He was a genius, a great discoverer--above all an inspiration
to methods of study that have been most fruitful in their results, and
withal a devout Christian and firm adherent of the Roman Catholic
Church. He was not a hero in the matter of dissection, however, for
there was no necessity for heroism. Dissection had been practiced very
assiduously before his time in all the universities of Italy,
especially in Bologna, which was a Papal city from the beginning of
the sixteenth century, and also in Rome at the medical college of the
Roman University under the very eye of the Popes.

{112}

In the light of this knowledge read President White's paragraph with
regard to Vesalius:

"From the outset Vesalius proved himself a master. In the search for
real knowledge he _risked the most terrible dangers, and especially
the charge of sacrilege, founded upon the teachings of the Church
for ages._ As we have seen, even such men in the early Church as
Tertullian and St. Augustine held anatomy in abhorrence, and the
decretal of Pope Boniface VIII. was _universally construed as
forbidding all dissection, and as threatening excommunication
against those practicing it. Through this sacred conventionalism
Vesalius broke without fear; despite ecclesiastical censure,_ great
opposition in his own profession and popular fury, he studied his
science by the only method that could give useful results. No peril
daunted him. To secure material for his investigat