i] His Forerunners and Followers. 11 



We cannot it is true point to any great physiological 

 discovery as Vesalius' own special handiwork, but in a sense 

 he was the author of discoveries which were made after him. 

 He set before himself a great task, that of placing the study of 

 human anatomy on a sound basis, on the basis of direct, patient, 

 exact observation. And he accomplished it. Galen had at- 

 tempted the same thing before him ; but the times were not 

 then ripe for such a step. Authority laid its heavy hand on 

 inquiry, and Galen's teaching instead of being an example and 

 an encouragement for further research, was, as we have said, made 

 into a bible, and interpretation was substituted for investigation. 

 Vesalius, inspired by the spirit of the new learning, did his work 

 in such a way as to impress upon his age the value not only of 

 the results at which he arrived, but also and even more so, of the 

 method by which he had gained them. He taught in such a 

 way that his disciples, even when they thought him greater 

 than Galen, never made a second Galen of him ; they recognized 

 that they were most truly following his teaching as a whole 

 when they appealed to observation to shew that in this or that 

 particular point his teaching was wrong. After him back- 

 sliding became impossible ; from the date of the issue of his 

 work onward, anatomy pursued an unbroken, straightforward 

 course, being made successively fuller and truer by the labours 

 of those who came after. 



Vesalius' great work is a work of anatomy, not of physiology. 

 Though to almost every description of structure there are added 

 observations on the use and functions of the structures described, 

 and though at the end of the work there is a short special 

 chapter on what we now call experimental physiology, the book 

 is in the main a book of anatomy, the physiology is incidental, 

 occasional, and indeed halting. Nor is the reason far to seek. 

 Vesalius had a great and difficult task before him. He had 

 to convince the world that the only true way to study the 

 phenomena of the living body was, not to ask what Galen had 

 said, but to see for one self with one's own eyes how things 

 really were. And not only was a sound and accurate know- 

 ledge of the facts of structure a necessary prelude to any sound 

 conclusions concerning function, but also the former was the 



