ANOTHER FRIEND VESALIUS. 11 



was every reason why two such men should be friends. 

 They were both famous: one eminent in mathematics, 

 the other in anatomy ; both physicians, yet with no clash- 

 ing of interests to make them disagree. They both loved 

 pleasure; and although Vesalius indolently wasted at 

 the court of Madrid the mature years of his life, that 

 time was in the future ; when he taught at Pavia, his 

 taste for luxury had not yet marred the polish or the 

 keenness of his wit. Again, they had both triumphed in 

 a battle with the world. Vesalius was a man thirteen 

 years his junior, whom Jerome knew how to respect. 

 On the other hand, the young anatomist, over whom old 

 practitioners were groaning, who was compelled by the 

 prejudices of society to plunder churchyards, and to keep 

 dead bodies concealed sometimes even in his bed, pro- 

 bably would like Jerome all the better for the perse- 

 cutions he, too, had experienced, and for his bold care- 

 lessness about conventional respectability. Certainly the 

 professors of anatomy and medicine were friends; to that 

 fact one testifies by statements and allusions scattered 

 through his works, and to that fact the other also testified 

 on the occasion that has caused his name to appear in the 

 present narrative. 



Christian III, King of Denmark, wished to secure long 

 life for himself by attaching to his court some very 

 eminent physician. Since, however, Christian had be- 

 haved in but a heathenish way towards the Roman 



