24 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD 



practised. Padua was the university of his choice. He 

 immediately made his mark there, and was appointed 

 a professor when only twenty- four years of age. He 

 established a scientific tradition at Padua which that 

 university has retained to this day. 



It may seem surprising that a Belgian should be 

 appointed to teach in an Italian university. You must, 

 however, remember that at that time there was only one 

 language for learning Latin. All learned books, all 

 medical books, nearly all religious books, all books on 

 history and biography, and even most school text-books, 

 in fact all serious books of any kind were at that time 

 written in Latin. The lectures in the universities and 

 even most of the lessons in the schools were given in 

 Latin. The native language of a professor was there- 

 fore" not of great importance. The really important 

 thing was that he should be able to speak and write 

 Latin fluently. This was, therefore, an essential accom- 

 plishment of every educated man, and one which Vesalius 

 had early acquired. 



No sooner was Vesalius settled as a professor at Padua 

 than he applied himself with extraordinary diligence to 

 lecturing and to research. He was a most successful 

 teacher, and students crowded to hear him. His audience 

 is said to have frequently numbered as many as five 

 hundred. As an aid to his pupils he issued, in 1538, 

 soon after his appointment, a sort of students' guide 

 to anatomy and physiology. It consisted of six fine 

 plates of pictures with very full descriptions. These 

 pictures show that he had made a careful examination 

 of the human skeleton, but that his physiological views 

 were still taken from Galen and Aristotle. In these 

 plates he still speaks, for instance, of the liver as the 

 source of the veins, and the heart as the source of the 

 arteries and of the innate heat. 



