Roger Bacon, Vesalius 219 



The year that saw the birth of Shakespeare witnessed 

 in the remote island of Zante the death of Vesalius, who, 

 as a medical student at a hospital in Venice, had rubbed 

 shoulders with a young soldier, Ignatius Loyola, who six 

 years later founded the Order of the Jesuits. Vesalius, 

 who was born at Brussels on the last day of the year 1514, 

 was the first biologist to abandon authority. Dispensing 

 with the aid of unskilled barbers, he dissected the human 

 body with his own hands. Like Harvey, whose discovery 

 of the circulation of the blood dates but three years after 

 Skakespeare's death, he 



" Sought for Truth in Truth's own Book, 

 The creatures, which by God Himself was writ, 



And wisely thought 'twas fit, 

 Not to read Comments only upon it, 

 But on the original itself to look." 



At the beginning of his scientific career, like his master 

 Sylvius, Professor at the College of France, Vesalius trusted 

 the written word of Galen more than he trusted his own 

 eyesight, but in the end his sight and his reason conquered, 

 and at last he taught only what he himself could see and 

 make his students see. 



Vesalius was the founder of modern anatomy, physiology, 

 and, I think we may say, also of modern zoology and 

 botany, for the methods of these sciences are one. His 

 great work on " The Structure of the Human Body " 

 appeared at Basle in 1543, and was beginning to have 

 influence in England, but only amongst the learned, well 

 before the middle of the sixteenth century. 



His English pupils, amongst whom was John Caius, 

 the third founder of Gonville and Caius College, helped to 

 spread his methods and principles in this country. Amongst 

 the many pupils of John Caius we may mention Thomas 

 Moffett. Comparatively few men in those days lived much 

 over fifty years, and Moffett, born in 1553, died in 1604. 

 He joined Trinity College in 1569, but migrated to Caius 

 in 1572, where he was nearly poisoned by eating mussels. 

 After taking his M.A. degree, he, as was the habit of the time, 

 studied abroad and received in 1578 the degree of M.D. 

 at Basle where he was a pupil of Felix Plater and of Zwinger. 



