e cry is always for "sound learning": the
idea always has been that the older studies are "SAFE."

At twenty-eight years of age Vesalius gave to the world his great
work on human anatomy. With it ended the old and began the new; its
researches, by their thoroughness, were a triumph of science; its
illustrations, by their fidelity, were a triumph of art.

To shield himself, as far as possible, in the battle which he foresaw
must come, Vesalius dedicated the work to the Emperor Charles V, and in
his preface he argues for his method, and against the parrot repetitions
of the mediaeval text-books; he also condemns the wretched anatomical
preparations and specimens made by physicians who utterly refused to
advance beyond the ancient master. The parrot-like repeaters of Galen
gave battle at once. After the manner of their time their first missiles
were epithets; and, the vast arsenal of these having been exhausted,
they began to use sharper weapons--weapons theologic.

In this case there were especial reasons why the theological authorities
felt called upon to intervene. First, there was the old idea prevailing
in the Church that the dissection of the human body is forbidden to
Christians: this was used with great force against Vesalius, but he at
first gained a temporary victory; for, 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 was simple: the great Emperor Charles V had made Vesalius his
physician and could not spare him; but, on the accession of Philip II
to the throne of Spain and the Netherlands, the whole scene changed.
Vesalius now complained that in Spain he could not obtain even a human
skull for his anatomical investigations: the medical and theological
reactionists had their way, and to all appearance they have, as a rule,
had it in Spain ever since. As late as the last years of the eighteenth
century an observant English traveller found that there were no
dissections before medical classes in the Spanish universities, and that
the doctrine of the circulation of the blood was still denied, more than
a century and a half after Sarpi and Harvey had proved it.

Another theological idea barred the path of Vesalius. Throughout
the Middle Ages it was believed that there exists in man a bone
imponderable, incorruptible, incombustible--the necessary nucleus of
the resurrection body. Belief in a resurrection of the ph