Part 8

Ingrassias, who lived between the years 1510-1580, was a graduate of the celebrated Paduan School. He described minutely the anatomy of the ear, including the tympanum, fenestrae rotunda and ovalis, the cochlea, the semi-circular canals, and the tensor tympani muscle. His admiring pupils caused his portrait to be painted and placed in the Neapolitan School, with this inscription:—“To Philip Ingrassias, of Sicily, who, by his lectures, restored the science of true Medicine and Anatomy in Naples, his pupils have suspended this portrait as a mark of grateful remembrance”. Ingrassias was a voluminous writer, his chief work being a treatise on osteology, which was published twenty-three years after his death. When the plague depopulated Palermo, in 1575, his devotion was such as to earn for him the title of the Sicilian Hippocrates. Few men have been more earnest workers in medical science. If his fame as an anatomist has not equalled that of others, the cause is to be sought in the multiplicity of competitors, not in lack of zeal and ability.

CHAPTER THIRTEENTH Commentators and Plagiarists

Medical history furnishes numerous examples of literary theft. In many instances an entire set of anatomical plates has been pirated by unscrupulous publishers. In a few cases both text and plates have been appropriated by medical authors. The most notorious example of this form of theft was furnished by William Cowper (1666-1709), an English surgeon and anatomist, who, having secured three hundred copies of Bidloo’s set of one hundred and five anatomical plates, in 1697 issued the work[26] as his own. Cowper added a few original illustrations to the book.

Vesalius suffered severely at the hands of the plagiarists. Pirated editions of the _Tabulae Anatomicae_ were printed in several cities, chiefly in Germany. As regards the _Fabrica_, we may say that it has been the fountain from which many anatomical writers have derived practically all of their illustrations and much of their text.

The fame of the _Fabrica_ soon spread throughout Europe. It was published in Germany, in Holland and in England. An epitome of its contents was issued in Latin, in 1545, by Thomas Geminus, or Gemini, under the title:—_Compendiosa totius Anatomiae delineatio, aere exaratum per Thomam. Geminum._ It contained forty of the Vesalian plates, cut in copper, and was the first book issued in England in which the roller printing process was employed. It was dedicated to Henry the Eighth, and was embellished with “one of the earliest and most curious of all extant engraved title-pages”.

In 1553, Geminus issued a second edition, in which the text was translated into English. This edition was dedicated to Edward the Sixth, with a commendatory note, “To the gentill readers and Surgeons of Englande”. Six years later the third English edition appeared, which was inscribed to Queen Elizabeth. It contains the first published portrait of the Queen. She is shown upon the engraved title-page, and, strange to say, above her is another queenly figure, with a pen in her right hand, a wreath on her left, her foot resting on the globe, and styled _Victoria_.

Another English work on anatomy, which is filled with poor imitations of Vesalius’s illustrations, is the _Microcosmographia_ of Helkiah Crooke, or Crocus, who was “Professor in Anatomy and Chirurgery”. Its chief value rests in an elaborately engraved title-page, a part of which shows Crooke giving a demonstration in anatomy in the presence of the “Worshipfull Company of Barber-Chirurgeons”, in London, early in the seventeenth century.

John Banister of Nottingham, in 1578, borrowed a few Vesalian woodcuts for use in _The Historie of Man, sucked from the sappe of the most approved Anatomists and published for the Utilitie of all Godly Chirurgians within this Realme_.

Most of the host of translators, epitomizers, commentators and imitators of Vesalius have passed into oblivion. A few of these persons have possessed enough of individuality to deserve recognition.

Juan Valverde di Hamusco, a Spaniard who was born about the year 1500, studied anatomy at Padua and later at Rome. His book, _Historia de la Composicion del Cuerpo Humano_, was published at Rome in 1556. It contains forty-two copperplates and an engraved title-page. Although the author says he has used only the Vesalian plates, his work contains several plates which are not to be found in Vesalius’s writings. For example, Valverde shows a _muskelmann_ with his skin held in his right hand, the left grasping a dagger which may have been used in the skinning process. Other original drawings show the abdomen and intestines, a pregnant woman with the abdomen opened, and illustrations of the superficial veins.

Valverde was physician to Cardinal Juan de Toledo, Archbishop of Santiago, to whom the work is dedicated. The illustrations were drawn by Gaspar Becerra and were engraved by Nicholas Beatrizet. Valverde’s book went through several editions. It forms a landmark in the medical history of Spain—a country which, for many years, was behind other states of Europe in matters of science.

To name the list of anatomical writers who have derived their artistic inspiration from the _Fabrica_ would require much more space than is at our disposal. It must suffice to say, that, for a period of two centuries, nearly all treatises on anatomy contained illustrations which were taken from the writings of Vesalius. With few exceptions, these reproductions were little better than caricatures of the original figures.

Of the numerous editions of the _Fabrica_ there are three which are highly prized, namely, the first one, 1543; the second, issued in 1555, containing eight hundred and twenty-four pages, with many changes in the text; and the 1725 edition of the collected writings of Vesalius. The last named is a huge volume which was published at Leyden under the supervision of Boerhaave and Albinus, with the illustrations cut in copper by Jan Wandelaar[27].

It contains the _Fabrica_, the _Epitome_, the _Epistola de Radicis Chynae_, various anatomical treatises of a controversial character, and the _Chirurgia Magna_ which has been wrongly attributed to Vesalius. Morley says of this book:—“After his death a great work on surgery appeared, in seven books, signed with his name, and commonly included among his writings. There is reason, however, to believe that his name was stolen to give value to the book, which was compiled and published by a Venetian, Prosper Bogarucci, a literary crow, who fed himself upon the dead man’s reputation”.

CHAPTER FOURTEENTH The Court Physician

Vesalius, having finished the _Fabrica_, intended to write a work on the practice of medicine which should be based on pathology. He makes mention of this in the preface of the _Fabrica_, and in numerous places in the body of the book he describes the pathologic appearances which he found in dissection.

Returning to Padua after a year’s absence, he found that the University for which he had strenuously labored was a very hotbed of opposition. His former pupil and friend, Realdus Columbus, who was now lecturing on anatomy at Padua, had turned against him. How deeply Vesalius was wounded by the man whom he had made, can be appreciated only by those who have been placed in similar circumstances. The controversy between Columbus and Vesalius was of a bitter and personal character.

On all sides the views of Vesalius were attacked, and the defenders of Galen joined hands with men like Columbus in an effort to besmirch the great anatomist. Disgusted with such treatment, Vesalius, early in 1544, went to Pisa. Here he conducted a course in anatomy. Leaving Pisa, he went to Bologna where he made some special dissections upon two bodies. About this time he declined a chair in the University of Pisa which was tendered to him by direction of Cosimo de’ Medici. Tired of the apparently useless effort to make men see the truth, sick of disputes and arguments, persecuted by members of his own profession, in a fit of passion Vesalius threw his manuscripts into the fire and ended his career as a scientist. “Thus”, says Morley, “he destroyed a huge volume of annotations upon Galen; a whole book of Medical Formulae; many original notes upon drugs; the copy of Galen from which he lectured, covered with marginal notes of new observations that had occurred to him while demonstrating; and the paraphrase of the books of Rhazes, in which the knowledge of the Arabians was collated with that of the Greeks and others”.

While in this frame of mind it is not surprising that he should have accepted the appointment of Archiatrus to Charles the Fifth of Spain.

The great Emperor was now at the zenith of his fame. His kingdom, which reached from South America to the Zuyder Zee, was well under control, but the monarch already contemplated the abdication of the throne in favor of his son Philip, who is known in history as Philip the Second.

Vesalius left Italy and took up his residence at Madrid. He was now in his thirtieth year. As Archiatrus he accompanied the Emperor in the fourth French war, in which he gained his first experience as a military surgeon. He also acted as physician to Charles and to the members of the imperial household. The war ended in September 1544. In January, 1545, Charles went to Brussels, and remained in the Netherlands for many months. Vesalius was now in his native country, and in April, 1546, he visited the graves of his ancestors at Nymwegen and Wesel. In the same year he published a new edition of his treatise on the China root.

On the twenty-fifth day of October, 1555, amid a scene of pomp and splendor, in the presence of the assembled representatives of the Netherlands, Charles formally surrendered to his son all his territories, jurisdiction and authority in the Low-Countries. This was the first of a series of acts by which the Emperor gradually relinquished the reins of power, in order to spend his remaining days in a cloister. Philip thus became the heir to a vast dominion. Vesalius was continued in office as Archiatrus by the new Emperor. From both Charles and Philip, Vesalius received many marks of honor. It was he who rescued Charles from what was thought to be a mortal disease. At a later date, when Philip’s unfortunate son, Don Carlos, received a severe injury to the head, and after the treatment of the Spanish physicians had failed, it was Vesalius who saved his life by an operation. These cures, and the accurate prediction of the death-day of Maximilian d’Egmont, placed the fame of Vesalius at high tide.

CHAPTER FIFTEENTH Pilgrimage and Death

Suddenly, early in the year 1564, for a reason which has never been explained satisfactorily, Vesalius left Madrid. Apparently he was at the height of success. He was famous as a physician and surgeon; he was a favorite at the Spanish court; he had amassed a fortune; and seemingly he was destined to pass his remaining days under the most favorable surroundings. As occurs to all great men, he had excited the jealous animosity of many of the members of his profession. The efforts of the Madrid physicians to ignore the talents of one whom they regarded as a foreigner, long since had reacted to the advantage of the Archiatrus.

During the twenty years that he had filled the post of Archiatrus, the scalpel of Vesalius was rusting: but the controversy concerning the infallibility of Galen was still raging. The violent criticisms of Sylvius upon the _Fabrica_ had been silenced by death, but others took up the cause of Galen where Sylvius had left it. But the passing years had brought a new coterie of professors, who, like Fallopius at Padua; Rondelet at Montpellier; Massa at Venice; and Fuchs at Tübingen, were boldly teaching many things that were contrary to Galen.

Life at the Spanish court was not favorable to the study of science. “The hand of the Church”, says Foster[28], “was heavy on the land; the dagger of the Inquisition was stabbing at all mental life, and its torch was a sterilizing flame sweeping over all intellectual activity. The pursuit of natural knowledge had become a crime, and to search with the scalpel into the secrets of the body of man was accounted sacrilege. It was for a life in priest-ridden, ignorant, superstitious Madrid that Vesalius had forsaken the freedom of the Venetian Republic and the bright academic circles of Padua; in Madrid, where, as he himself has said, ‘he could not lay his hand on so much as a dried skull, much less have the chance of making a dissection’. Moreover, he must have felt the loss of Charles, who, whatever his faults, recognized the worth of intellectual efforts, and in many ways had shown his sympathy with Vesalius’s love of knowledge. Such sympathy could not be looked for in the narrow and bigoted Philip”.

About this time Vesalius received a copy of the _Observationes Anatomicae_ of his pupil Fallopius, who, having learned all that his master had taught of anatomy, continued his studies with great skill and industry. Such a book, coming at an opportune time, must have seemed like a voice calling the Archiatrus back to the intellectual life, bringing to his mind’s eye the recollection of his happy days in Italy.

Vesalius travelled to Venice by way of Perpignan. While in Venice he visited the printer, Francesco Sanese, and discussed the publication of a new book which should contain his reply to Fallopius. In a short time he started for Cyprus in company with Jacobo Malatesta, the commander of the Venetian forces in that island. Thence he passed to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Vesalius never returned from that journey. Information of his death reached Brussels towards the end of that year—1564.

What was the reason for this pilgrimage? Various alleged authorities have given different versions, many of which are evidently fictitious. The most reasonable account, which emanates from Spanish-French sources, dates from a letter written January 1, 1565, to the physician Caspar Peucer by Hubert Languer, or Hubertus Languetus, the Huguenot friend of Philip Sidney, which says:—“They say that Vesalius is dead. Doubtless you have heard that he went to Jerusalem. That journey had, as they tell us from Spain, an odd reason. Vesalius, believing a young Spanish nobleman whom he had attended to be dead, obtained leave of the parents to open the body for the sake of inquiring into the cause of the illness, which he had not rightly comprehended. This was granted; but he had no sooner made an incision into the body than he perceived the symptoms of life, and opening the breast, saw the heart beat. The parents coming afterwards to the knowledge of this, were not satisfied with prosecuting him for murder, but accused him to the Inquisition of impiety, in hopes that he would be punished with greater rigor by the judges of that tribunal than by those of the common law. But the King of Spain interposed, and saved him on condition that by way of atoning for the error he should undertake a pilgrimage to the Holy Land”.

The pilgrimage was made, the Holy Sepulcher was visited, and the weary wanderer had started for Padua to take the chair which was made vacant by the death of Fallopius. A violent storm swept the Ionian Sea. Vesalius’s ship was wrecked upon the island of Zakynthos, where, on the fifteenth day of October, 1564, the Archiatrus died of exhaustion.

Such was the miserable end of Andreas Vesalius of Brussels, a man, who, before he had attained his thirtieth year, had become the greatest anatomist that the world has ever seen.

FOOTNOTES

[1]Théorie de la figure humaine. Paris, 1773.

[2]Moehsen: Verzeichnis einer Sammlung von Bildnissen. Berlin, 1771; page 59.

[3]Bell: Observations on Italy. Edinburgh, 1825; page 257.

[4]Galen: De Anatomicis Adininistrationibus. Lib. II.

[5]Celsus: De Medicina. Lib. I.

[6]Fisher: Claudius Galenus. Annals of Anatomy and Surgery, Vol. IV., page 216.

[7]Saint Basil, in his maturer years, deeply regretted that he had studied classical literature in his youth. Jerome regarded the reading of the writings of antiquity as a terrible crime. Gregory the Great declared a knowledge of grammar even for a layman to be indelicate.—Fort: Medical Economy during the Middle Ages. N. Y., 1883; pages 102, 103.

[8]Meryon: History of Medicine. London, 1861; vol. I, page 479.

[9]Adam; Vitae Germanorum Medicorum. Haidelbergae, 1620: page 224.

[10]Zwinger: Theatrum Vitae Humanae. Basileae, 1571.

[11]Vesalius: Fabrica, 1543, preface.

[12]Sylvius: Ordo et Ordinis Ratio in Legendis Hippocratis et Galeni Libris, 1539.

[13]The Collége Royal de France was founded by Francis the First. This enlightened patron of the sciences and arts recognized the merits of scientific men and rewarded them with his money and his friendship. He established the Collége de France with twelve richly-endowed professorships, one of which was devoted to medicine. The lectures were free to all who desired to attend. The first incumbent of the chair of medicine was Vidus Vidius, Guido Guidi, of Florence, who filled this position from 1542 to 1548. Such success followed his labors that, on his return to Italy, his experience in Paris was the subject of this witticism: _Vidus venit, Vidius vidit, Vidus vicit_.

[14]Northcote: History of Anatomy. London, 1772; page 56.

[15]Portal: Histoire de l’Anatomie et de la Chirurgie. Paris, 1770; vol. I, page 365.

[16]Moreau: Vita Sylvii, in Sylvii Opera Medica. Geneva, 1635.

[17]Vesalius: De radice Chinae epistola, 1546; pages 151, 152.

[18]Archives Curieuses de l’Histoire de France.

[19]Guinterius: Anatomicarum Institutionum, 1539.

[20]Paraphrasis in nonum librum Rhazae medici Arabis clariss. ad Regem Almansorem, de singularum corporis partium affectuum curatione, autore Andrea Wesalio Bruxellensi Medicinae candidato. Lovanii ex officina Rutgeri Resii. mense Februar. 1537.

[21]Radicis Chinae usus, Andrea Vesalio autore. Lugd., 1547; page 278.

[22]Moehsen: Verzeichnis einer Sammlung von Bildnissen. Berlin, 1771; page 82.

[23]Sandrart: Teutsche Academie. Nürnberg, 1685: vol. II., page 243.

[24]Portal: Histoire de l’anatomie et de la chirurgie. Paris, 1770; vol. I., page 399.

[25]McMurrich: Medical Library and Historical Journal, December, 1906.

[26]Cowper: The Anatomy of Human Bodies. Oxford, 1697.

[27]Andreae Vesalii Opera Omnia Anatomica et Chirurgica in duos tomos distributa cura Hermanni Boerhaave et Bernhardi Siegfried Albini. Lugduni Batavorum, 1725.

[28]Foster: Lectures on the History of Physiology. Cambridge, 1901, page 17.

INDEX

INDEX

A Abrégé d’anatomie 93 Achillinus, Alexander 42 Adam, M. 55 Adolph of Nassau 11 Aegina, Paul of 63, 80 Aesculapius 17 Aetius 80 Alberti, Leo Battista 7 Albertus Magnus 55 Albius, John Andreas 80 Albinus, B. S. 46, 115, 129 Albucasis 30 Alcmaeon 19, 115 Aldo 11 Aldus Manutius 43 Alexander of Tralles 63 Alexander the Great 20 Alexandria 20, 22 Alexandrian Anatomists 22, 23 Alexandrian Library 23 Alexandrian University 22, 29 Alfonso the Magnificent 5 Almansor, the 72 Al-Rasi 31 Amatus 51 Ambrosian Library 113 Anatomy in Ancient Times 17-28 Anathomia Mundini 11, 35, 48 Anatomia Corporis Humani 37 Anatomia ridotta 93 Anatomia Porci 27 Anatomical Renaissance 14 Andernach, John Winter of 61 Antonius Musa 20 Antropologium of Magnus Hundt 39 Apelles 22 Aphorisms of Hippocrates 53 Apollo 19 Apophyses venarum 51 Aquaeductus Fallopii 122 Aqueduct of Sylvius 60 Arabs 27, 30, 56 Arantius 15, 16 Archimedes 22 Archiatrus 131, 132, 135, 136 Aristophanes 22 Aristotle 19, 55, 65, 66, 67 Ars Curativa of Galen 56 Art-Anatomy 7, 91 Artery of Sylvius 60 Asclepiadae 17, 19, 56 Astruc 57 Athanasius 22 Augustus 20 Aurelius, Marcus 24 Averröes 4, 56 Avicenna 15, 31, 56, 80