2 Vesalius : [lect. 



Nor need I, I trust, make any apology for having, though 

 invited to speak to medical hearers, chosen not the history of 

 medicine but the history of physiology. The whole story of 

 the rise and growth of the art of healing is too vast to be 

 gathered into one set of lectures, too varied to be treated of by 

 one man alone. I have chosen that part of the whole story 

 with which alone I am competent to deal; and I venture to 

 think that, without appearing to exalt unduly my own studies, 

 I may go so far as to say that a knowledge of the laws which 

 govern the phenomena of all living things is so essentially the 

 basis of all attempts to succour, or to watch over the welfare of, 

 one set of beings that the history of physiology cannot be 

 regarded in any other light than as the heart or kernel of the 

 history of medicine. 



I do not propose to begin at the beginning of things. I will 

 leave on one side, for the present at least, the details of the 

 knowledge of the phenomena of life possessed by those whom 

 we speak of as ' the ancients.' I will ask you to let me start 

 with the middle of the sixteenth century, and indeed with the 

 particular year 1543. 



Those were stirring times, times of wars and rumours of 

 wars. The brilliant career of Charles V. was drawing towards 

 its close ; in that very year he was in the midst of his fourth, 

 his last and short war with his rival Francis I. of France. 

 Venice had still all the signs of outward splendour, but within 

 the rift in the lute was rapidly widening. The Medici were 

 once more established at Florence, and the burly Henry VIII. 

 was ruling over England. Some twenty years before Cortez 

 had conquered Mexico, some ten years before Pizarro had laid 

 hold first of Peru and then of Chili ; and Europe in the East 

 was enjoying the spoils of the West. 



The times were times of strong under-currents of thought. 

 The Reformation was abroad. Luther was living his last years — 

 he died in 1546, the year after the Council of Trent — and 

 Calvin was strong at Geneva ; but the order of the Jesuits was 

 already a year old, and the Inquisition held Spain in its grip. 

 It was the heyday of Art. Though Raphael had been dead for 

 three and twenty years, Michael Angelo had nearly as many 



