94 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Trinity." Under color of modifying some of the views enunciated in 

 his first work, he now cast the concluding anathema against all tyrants 

 of the Church, as a parting shot, and off he went to France, reaching 

 Paris toward the end of 1532. 



If Switzerland and Germany " were too hot for him," Roman Cath- 

 olic France would have proved still hotter; hut during the time he 

 lived in that country he never made himself known save as " Monsieur 

 Michel Villeneuve," from the town of his nativity. He entered as a 

 student of mathematics and physics at one of the colleges of Paris, 

 and lived very quietly. At a later period he took his degree of M. A. 

 in the University of Paris. 



But the study of mathematics had soon to be abandoned for present 

 means of subsistence. After a short stay at Avignon and Orleans, 

 Villeneuve betook himself to Lyons, then a great centre of learning. 

 There he seems to have found ready employment as reader and cor- 

 rector of the press, first, and afterward as editor in the celebrated 

 printing-establishment of Trechscl Brothers. Among the works he 

 edited for them, the " Geography of Ptolemy," enriched by extensive 

 comments from him, can by no means be overlooked, connected as it is 

 with the charges imputed to its editor, later on, in his trial at Geneva. 



The reading-room of the printers of Lyons, and the acquaintance 

 Servetus formed there with the great physician and naturalist, Dr. 

 Champier, brought the former back from the empyrean of metaphysics 

 to the earth, and put him in the way of becoming the geographer, 

 astrologian, Biblical critic, physiologist, and physician, with whom 

 we are made familiar in his subsequent life and writings. With the 

 money he had saved in the two years spent with Trechsel, he went 

 back to Paris (1536), and gave himself to the study of medicine. He 

 became at once associated with scientists as distinguished as Andreas 

 Vesalius, the creator of modern anatomy, and Joannes Guinterus ; 

 and in a singularly short time he obtained the degree of M. D. With 

 the stimulus of necessity upon him, for he was poor, and the excite- 

 ment of ambition, with which he was largely endowed, as he found it 

 hard to earn a living by his profession, Servetus appeared before the 

 world as lecturer on geography and astrology which then embraced 

 the true doctrine of the heavenly bodies, as well as the false one of 

 their influence on the life of man ; and in this capacity he achieved an 

 enormous success. Next he came forward in connection with his pro- 

 fession by writing a book on " Medicinal Sirups and their Use," thus 

 winning fame also as a physician. A fiery struggle was going on 

 during the early part of the sixteenth century between the Averrho- 

 ists and the Galenists. Like his initiator into medical matters, Dr. 

 Champier, Servetus was himself a Galenist ; but in this character, too, 

 he showed the independence of his nature, by having open eyes for any 

 truth which the Arabian writers and their followers might present. 



Servetus's fate on starting in life was opposition. Through supe- 



