14 STUDIES IN ADVANCED PHYSIOLOGY. 



improve on what they said, and useless to try to add 

 materially to their knowledge. Galen's views of the vital 

 spirits and the circulation are accepted. Mondini adds his 

 interpretation of the meaning of the auricles. They are 

 to act as overflow reservoirs for the ventricles, to store the 

 excess of blood or vital spirits when the ventricle is manu- 

 facturing these too rapidly. 



Two hundred years later, in 1514, the chair of anatomy 

 and physiology at Bologna was occupied by the surgeon, 

 Carpi, who published a treatise on anatomy even more 

 extensive than that of Mondini, but not differing from his 

 predecessor in any of his fundamental physiological con- 

 ceptions. 



VESALIUS. 



A new era in physiology was ushered in by the Dutch 

 anatomist, Vesalius, 1537, whose immense credit lies not 

 so much in what he himself contributed to the science of 

 physiology as in the position he took with reference to the 

 ideas of the past. He boldly antagonized many of Galen's 

 views, showed that many of his observations had been con- 

 ducted on animals and not on the human body itself, and so 

 recognized the necessity for more definite descriptions. 

 With Vesalius the absolute charm of the all-sufficiency of 

 the past was broken, and he strongly suggested the neces- 

 sity of beginning anew the investigations of anatomy and 

 physiology, and the subjection of the ideas of the ancients to 

 a careful and impartial test. He boldly denied that there are 

 pores through the ventricular septum as Galen describes, 

 and insisted that the traditional view of the blood circula- 

 tion was wholly inadequate to explain all the facts, and he 

 might have discovered the circulation of the blood had he 

 remained the professor of anatomy at Padua and not been 

 made court physician at Madrid. 



*/:/? FETUS. 



The next great step forward in physiology came from an 

 unexpected source and in a remarkable manner. The far- 



