History and Progress of Comparative Anatomy. 301 



IStieiine imm unity from the fanatical severity of the times. His 

 tranquillity was disturbed, and his pursuits interrupted by the 

 oppressive persecutions in which their religious opinions involved 

 the family ; and Charles Etienne drew the last breath of a mi- 

 serable life in a dungeon in 1564. 



-4While anatomical science was in this languid state in France, 

 a great revolution was effected in its favour by the exertions of 

 a young Fleming, whose appearance forms a conspicuous era in 

 its history. Andrew Vesalius, a native of Brussels, after acquir- 

 ing at Louvain the ordinary classical attainments of the day, began 

 at the age of 16 to study anatomy under the auspices of Dubois. 

 Common sense quickly taught him that little anatomical know- 

 ledge was to be obtained from the commentaries of Galen, and 

 the dissection of dogs and pigs only ; and the difficulties with 

 which the cultivation of human anatomy was encompassed in 

 France, made him look to Italy, which Mondino, Achillini, and 

 Berenger had already rendered distinguished ; and in 1536 we 

 find him at once zealously pursuing the study of human and 

 animal anatomy, and requested, ere he had attained his 22d year, 

 ttt demonstrate publicly in the University of Padua. After rcf- 

 maining here about seven years, he went by invitation to Bolog- 

 na, and soon after to Pisa ; and Vesalius, thus professor in three 

 universities, appears to have carried on his anatomical investiga- 

 tions and instructions alternately at Padua, Bologna, and Pisa, 

 in the course of the same season. On this account Vesalius, 

 though a Fleming by birth, and trained very early in the French 

 school, belongs as an anatomist to the Italian, and forms one of 

 that illustrious line of teachers, by whom the anatomical reputa- 

 tion of that country was in the sixteenth century raised to the 

 greatest eminence. K' 



Of the services of this distinguished anatomist it is impossible 

 in this short sketch to communicate an accurate idea. Though 

 Mondino and Berenger preceded him in teaching anatomy from 

 the human subject, and in publishing treatises derived from per- 

 sonal observation, Vesalius is entitled to the merit of composing 

 the first comprehensive and systematic view of human anatomy. 

 By his enemies he was accused of undue reverence to Galen, and 

 departing most widely from the method and description of that 

 anatomist. But at present wc arc rather sorry that he departed 



