Inquisition, and result in more rigorous punishment than any that would
be inflicted by the judges of the common law. The King of Spain,
however, interfered and saved him, on condition that he should make a
pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Accordingly he set out from Madrid for
Venice, and thence to Cyprus, from which place he went on to Jerusalem,
and was returning, not to Madrid, but to Padua, where the professorship
of physic had been offered him, when he suffered shipwreck on the island
of Zante, and there perished miserably of hunger and grief, on October
15, 1564, before he had reached the age of fifty. His body was found by
a travelling goldsmith, who recognized, notwithstanding their starved
outlines, the features of the renowned anatomist, and respectfully
buried his remains and raised a statue to his memory.
Two of the works of this great man have been already referred to,
namely: "De Corporis Humani Fabrica;" "De usu Radicis Chinae." Besides
these the following have appeared: "Examen Observationum Gabrielis
Fallopii;" "Gabrielis Cunei Examen, Apologiae Francisci Putei pro Galeno
in Anatome;" a great work on Surgery in seven books.
With respect to the last of these, it may be sufficient to remark that
there is every reason to believe that the name of the famous anatomist
was stolen after his death to give value to the production, which was
compiled and published by a Venetian named Bogarucci; and that Vesalius
is not responsible for the contents.
The other works are undoubtedly genuine. In 1562 Andreas seems to have
been roused for a short time from the lethargy into which he had sunk,
by an attack from Franciscus Puteus; for to this attack a reply
appeared--from a writer calling himself Gabriel Cuneus--which has always
been attributed by the most competent authorities to Vesalius himself.
In this rather long work, covering as it does more than fifty pages in
the folio edition, the views of Vesalius, which are at variance with
Galen, are gone through _seriatim_ and defended.
In 1561 Fallopius, who had studied under Vesalius, published his
"Anatomical Observations," containing several points in which he had
extended the knowledge of anatomy beyond the limits reached by his
master. He had taught publicly for thirteen years at Ferrara, and had
presided for eight years over an anatomical school, so that he was no
novice in the field of biology. Yet so completely had Vesalius lost the
philosophic temperament t
|