very threshold of the
Inquisition, a work at all times repulsive to flesh and blood.

After serving for a short time as a surgeon in the army of the Emperor
Charles V., Vesalius went to Italy, where he at once attracted the
attention of the most learned men, and became, at the age of twenty-two,
Professor of Anatomy at the University of Padua. This was the first
purely anatomical professorship that had been established out of the
funds of any university. For seven years he held the office, and he was
at the same time professor at Bologna and at Pisa. During these years
his lectures were always well attended, for they were a striking
innovation on the tameness of conventional routine. In each university
the services of the professor were confined to a short course of
demonstrations, so that his duties were complete when he had spent,
during the winter, a few weeks at each of the three towns in succession.
He then returned to Venice, which he appears to have made his
head-quarters. At this city, as well as at Pisa, special facilities were
offered to the professor for obtaining bodies either of condemned
criminals or others. At Padua and Bologna the enthusiasm of the
students, who became resurrectionists on their teacher's behalf, kept
the lecture-table supplied with specimens. They were in the habit of
watching all the symptoms in men dying of a fatal malady, and noting
where, after death, such men were buried. The seclusion of the graveyard
was then invaded, and the corpse secretly conveyed by Andreas to his
chamber, and concealed sometimes in his own bed. A diligent search was
at once made to determine accurately the cause of death. This pitiless
zeal for correct details in anatomy, associated as it was with
indefatigable practice in physic, appeared to Vesalius, as it does to
his successors of to-day, to be the only satisfactory method of
acquiring that knowledge which is essential to a doctor. Thus it was
that he, who at the age of twenty-two was able to name, with his eyes
blindfolded, any human bone put into his hand, who was deeply versed in
comparative anatomy, and had more accurate knowledge of the human frame
than any graybeard of the time, enjoyed afterwards a reputation as a
physician which was unbounded. One illustration of his sagacity in
diagnosis will suffice. A patient of two famous court physicians at
Madrid had a big and wonderful tumour on the loins. It would have been
easily recognized in these days