THE SUCCESSORS OF VESALIUS 39 



usually called Fabricius of Aquapendente, after the small 

 Tuscan village where he was born. Fabricius of Aqua- 

 pendente taught anatomy at Padua for over fifty-four 

 years, from 1555 till his death at eighty- two in 1619. 



Fabricius was a very learned man and an admirable 

 observer. He made many most valuable contributions 

 to the advancement of knowledge. Most of his works 

 had physiological bearings. Thus he was the founder 

 of modern embryology and the author of the first illus- 

 trated work on that subject, in which he describes the 

 formation of the chick in the egg. He was the first to 

 give accurate pictures of the structure of the eye. He 

 developed the mechanics of muscular movement. Almost 

 every department on which he touched he illumined by 

 striking observations, and he added to his qualities as 

 an observer those of a most attractive teacher. 



In spite of all his powers, however, Fabricius lacked 

 something which, if he had possessed it, would have 

 placed him in the very front rank of men of science. For 

 a man of his scientific abilities he was extraordinarily 

 conservative. He never shook himself free from ancient 

 views, and especially he was steeped in the theories of 

 Aristotle and Galen. Aristotle was a very great natu- 

 ralist, perhaps the greatest of all time, but like all 

 men he made mistakes. Moreover, Aristotle had had 

 few predecessors in the application of scientific method, 

 and he had therefore less material on which to form his 

 opinions than have modern writers. We must, there- 

 fore, judge him in relation to his own time and not to 

 ours. But Fabricius, like many in his day, accepted 

 fully the theories of Aristotle, though they were often 

 founded on inadequate or even erroneous observations. 

 This backward-looking habit of Fabricius prevented his 

 work from being as interesting and as epoch-making as 

 it might otherwise have been. In connection with the 



