age to the Holy Land. On his return from this journey 

 Vesalius was shipwrecked on a desert part of the island of 

 Zante, and died of hunger and neglect in 1564. 



During Vesalius* occupancy of the chair of anatomy at 

 the University of Padua, the Medical School became famous 

 and it retained its celebrity two hundred years. Italy being 

 the only country in which human bodies could be dissected 

 without legal penalties, anatomy and physiology made great 

 strides at the Universities of Padua, Pisa, Bologna, and 

 Naples. Fallopius, incredible as it now seems, wrote that 

 the Duke of Tuscany was obliging enough to send him crim- 

 inals, whom he killed and then dissected. To sketch the pro- 

 gress of the study of the human body would require a 

 volume; Eustachius, Arantius, Verolius, were some of the 

 great names; "Piccolomini laid the foundations of general 

 anatomy by his descriptions of cellular tissue, Goiter created 

 pathological anatomy, Prosper Alpinus diagnosis, Plater the 

 classification of disease, and Ambroise Pare modern surgery." 



(Draper.) 



Fabricius ab Acquapendente discovered the valves in the 

 bloodvessels; Michael Servetus, of Yillanova in Aragon, was 

 one of the first to revive the idea of pulmonary circulation, 

 but his talents did not prevent his becoming the victim of 

 the fanatical John Calvin, at whose instigation he was "very 

 slowly burned" at the stake for heresy in 1553. 



If the medical school at Padua had done nothing else 

 than educate the Englishman, William Harvey, its existence 

 would be justified; Harvey's prime discovery of the circula- 

 tion of the blood dates from about 1616, when he began to 

 teach it to his pupils in London. About forty years later 

 the microscope was applied to anatomical and physiological 



investigations ., but this superficial survey of progress in 



science must be closed , for two more events of great influence 



215 



