i] His Forerunners and Followers. 15 



a heart which has almost stopped beating may be revived by 

 the timely use of the bellows ; and he tells us many other 

 things. 



Obviously his vigorous and active young mind was starting 

 many inquiries of a purely physiological kind, and he was 

 aware that much of the physiology which he had put into his 

 book would not stand the test of future research. He knew 

 more particularly that the chapter in that book in which he 

 treated of the use of the heart and its parts was as he says 

 ' full of paradoxes.' But he was no less aware that his bold 

 attempt to expound the plain visible facts of anatomy such as 

 they appeared to one who had torn from his eyes the bandages 

 of authority, was of itself enough to raise a storm of opposition ; 

 he feared to jeopardize his success in that great effort by taking 

 upon himself further burdens. 



Experience shewed that in this he was right. Even while 

 he was writing his book, timorous friends urged him not to 

 publish it ; its appearance they said would destroy his prospects 

 in life. And in one sense it did. Towards the end of 1542 

 after the completion of his great task, although in August 

 of that year he had been reappointed to the Chair of Surgery 

 and Anatomy for three years, he, with the sanction of the 

 Senate, left Padua for a while, his pupil Realdus Columbus 

 being appointed his deputy. He made a short stay at Venice ; 

 he visited Basel either once or twice, chiefly it would seem to 

 confer with his printers ; but while in that city he prepared 

 with his own hands from the body of an executed criminal a 

 complete skeleton which is still religiously preserved there. He 

 also probably made a hurried journey to the Netherlands. 

 During his absence from Padua, after the appearance of his 

 book the storm broke out. The great Sylvius and others 

 thundered against him, reviling him in a free flow of adjectives. 

 Coming back to Padua, after about a years absence, he found 

 opposition to his new views strong even there, not the least active 

 among his opponents being his old pupil Columbus. He gave 

 lectures at Padua, offering to test publicly in the dissecting 

 theatre whether his statements were wrong or no. He lectured 

 also at Bologna, and at Pisa, where the enlightened Cosimo de' 



