i] His Forerunners and Followers. 3 



yet to live, and Titian was in his prime. The new learning 

 was everywhere working like leaven ; the old Universities were 

 expanding and new ones were springing up everywhere, the 

 worth of the Greek tongue was preached by the learned ; and 

 the great exponent of the oldest of sciences, that of the heavens, 

 Nicolas Copernicus, closed his eyes in this very year. Moreover 

 learning was being spread as well as made ; printing had seen 

 its hundredth birthday and the presses of Venice and other 

 cities were pouring forth the means of knowledge. The night 

 of the middle ages had passed away in the dawn of modern 1 

 times. 



In this year 1543 the printing-press of J. Oporinus (or Herbst) 

 in Basel gave to the world in a folio volume the Fabrica Humani 

 Corporis, the Structure of the Human Body, by Andreas 

 Vesalius. This marked an epoch in the history of Anatomy, 

 and so of Physiology and of Medicine. Who was Andreas 

 Vesalius, and why did his book mark an epoch ? 



Let me briefly answer the latter question first. In the 

 times of the Greeks mankind had made a fair start in the 

 quest of natural knowledge, both of things not alive and of 

 things living ; the search had been carried on into the second 

 century of the Christian Era when Galen expounded the 

 structure and the use of the parts of the body of man. As 

 Galen passed away inquiry, that is to say inquiry into natural 

 knowledge, stood still. For a thousand years or more the great 

 Christian Church was fulfilling its high mission by the aid of 

 authority ; but authority, as with the growth of the Church it 

 became more and more potent as an instrument of good, 

 became at the same time more and more potent as a steriliser 

 of original research in natural knowledge. 



The Church held the gates of learning, and they who entered 

 were bidden to tread her path and hers alone. Her methods 

 became the methods of all scholars. Under her guidance the 

 written word took the place of the made world ; the pursuit of 

 truth ceased to be the looking into the phenomena of nature and 

 the seeking for the reason why ; it narrowed itself to asking 

 what the teachers taught. The method which had proved 

 triumphant in the search after things spiritual was taken to 



1—2 



