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he would find protection from the persecution of his enemies. Besides, several 

 of his ancestors had been court physicians. He accompanied his delicate 

 master on all his many journeys through various European countries, in the 

 course of which he had but little time for continued research. In 1555, how- 

 ever, he published a new and improved edition of his great work, in which 

 he vigorously refutes his calumniators. Upon Charles's abdication he joined 

 his son Philip II, whose notorious obscurantism offered but the smallest 

 chance for his personal retainers to develop liberal ideas. In fact, after eight 

 years we find Vesalius leaving the court; in 1564 he visited Venice, in the 

 hope apparently of again taking up his old professorship, which then hap- 

 pened to be vacant. While waiting to be appointed he made a journey to the 

 East, visited Jerusalem as a pilgrim, and never again returned to the West. 

 The reason for his journey is not known for certain, nor indeed how he ended 

 his life. Thus disappeared into the unknown one of the greatest scientists of 

 modern times. 



Vesalius 's great anatomical work is arranged in the same order as that 

 which he followed in his anatomizing, mentioned above: first he discusses 

 bone-construction, then muscles, blood-vessels, and nerves, then the ab- 

 dominal organs and those of the thorax, and the brain, and finally he devotes 

 one chapter to an account of his vivisectional method. In his general concep- 

 tions Vesalius entirely adopts the standpoint of antiquity. His division of the 

 component parts of the body into simple and complex is borrowed from Aris- 

 totle, as also are most of his physiological terms; the food is "cooked" in the 

 abdominal cavity, the object of respiration is to cool the blood, the embryo 

 arises out of the father's semen and the mother's menstrual blood. From Galen, 

 whom he still highly respected, he takes his general conception of continuity 

 in existence and of the causes that govern it. The Creator has, to His own 

 honour and to the benefit of man, made the human body as perfect as pos- 

 sible; every part of it has been created just as it is in order to fulfil its specific 

 purpose. In many important details also he adheres to Galen's ideas, particu- 

 larly in regard to the circulatory system; he gives, it is true, an exhaustive 

 description of the structure of the heart, but as regards its and the liver's 

 relation to the vascular system he still retains the old traditional view. The 

 greatness of Vesalius lies in his method and technique. In this he created 

 the conditions necessary for the development of modern anatomy. Most of 

 the technique which is practised in every anatomical theatre today originates 

 from him; the instruments used at the present time are practically the same 

 as those which he designed, and the majority of them he introduced into 

 dissectional practice; the course of instruction as laid down in his works is 

 still followed; the skeletons used for demonstration purposes are mounted 

 after his method; and the plates used to facilitate instruction are for the most 

 part merely improved editions of his own. But his great service to science is 



