4 Vesalius : [lect. 



be the method in all inquiry, and biologic inquiry was no 

 exception. As spiritual truths were learned by the study of 

 the revealed word, so anatomical and medical truths were to be 

 sought for, not by looking directly into the body of man, not by 

 observing and thinking over the phenomena of disease, but by 

 studying what had been revealed in the writings of Hippocrates 

 and Galen. As the Holy Scriptures were the Bible for all 

 men, so the works of the Greek and Latin writers became 

 the bible for the anatomist and the doctor. Truth and science 

 came to mean simply that which was written, and inquiry 

 became mere interpretation. 



The 'new birth' of the 15th and 16th centuries was in 

 essence a revolt against authority as the guide in knowledge ; 

 and the work of Andreas Vesalius of which I am speaking 

 marks an epoch, since by it the idol of authority in anatomical 

 science was shattered to pieces never to be put together again. 

 Vesalius described the structure of the human body such as he 

 found it to be by actual examination, by appealing to dissection, 

 by looking at things as they are. He dared not only to shew 

 how often Galen was wrong, but to insist that when Galen was 

 right he was to be followed, not because he had said it, but 

 because what he said was in accordance with what anyone who 

 took the pains to inquire could assure himself to be the real 

 state of things. 



Vesalius like other great men had his forerunners. Long 

 before him at the close of the 13th and beginning of the 

 14th century Mundinus, Mondino (Raimondo de' Luzzi), one 

 of the teachers of the early days of the then great University 

 of Bologna, had dared to turn his eyes from the pages of 

 Galen to that of nature, and to learn for himself by actual 

 dissection how the body of man was built up. He learnt enough 

 to write a book of his own, the Anatomia Mvndini, which 

 after him became a text-book in the schools, though used 

 perhaps more as an introduction or help to Galen than in any 

 other way. But Mundinus did not go far. He like other 

 anatomists, like indeed Vesalius himself, had to struggle against 

 not only the authority but the direct hand of the Church. 

 She taught the sacredness of the human corpse, and was ready 



