18 Vesalius: [lect. 



Just at this time, in 1561, there came into his hands the 

 anatomical observations of Falloppius (Gabrielo Falloppio), a 

 man of whom I shall presently have to speak, who in 1551 had 

 after a brief interval succeeded Vesalius in the chair at Padua. 

 This book came to the wearied and despondent Vesalius, 

 banished to the intellectual desert of Madrid, as a living voice 

 from a bright world outside. " Putting everything else on one 

 "side, he gave himself," as he says, "wholly up to the instant 

 " greedy reading of the pages " which brought vividly back to 

 him the delights of his youth. Calling back from the past the 

 memory of things observed long ago, for new observations, as 

 we have seen, were out of his power, he put together bit by 

 bit some notes criticising Falloppius' work, put them together 

 hurriedly and rapidly, in order that Tiepolo, the Venetian 

 ambassador, then at Madrid but about to return to Venice, 

 might carry the manuscript with him. In that ' Examen,' 

 as he calls it, Vesalius says how the reading of Falloppius' 

 notes had raised in him " a glad and joyful memory of that 

 11 most delightful life which, teaching anatomy, I passed in Italy, 

 "the true nurse of intellects." He looks forward, he says, "to 

 " see the ornaments of our science continue to bud forth in the 

 " school from which I was while yet a youngster dragged away 

 " to the dull routine of medical practice and to the worries of 

 " continual journeys. I look forward to the accomplishment of 

 " that great work for which, to the best of my powers so far as 

 "my youth and my then judgment allowed, I laid foundations, 

 " such that I need not be ashamed of them." 



And even more, he was nursing the idea that his present 

 barren life might be exchanged for a more fruitful one. " I 

 " still," says he, "live in hope that at some time or other, by some 

 " good fortune I may once more be able to study that true bible, 

 " as we count it, of the human body and of the nature of man." 

 He was still the Vesalius of old, unchanged by all the ex- 

 periences of a life at Court. The words ' that true bible ' 

 epitomize his life's works. The true bible to read is nature 

 itself, things as they are, not the printed pages of Galen or 

 another ; science comes by observation, not by authority. And 

 we may perhaps go so far as to suppose that by adding the 



