22 Vesalkis : [lect. 



in Arra°:on, there was born in 1511 a man, afterwards known 

 by the name of Michael Servetus. Fleeing early from the 

 Inquisition and his native soil, wandering in many lands, 

 studying many things, learning anatomy under Sylvius and 

 Gunther at Paris, where he might have sat perhaps on the 

 same bench with Vesalius, his active mind devoured all the 

 knowledge of the time. He was in turn jurist, astronomer, 

 meteorologist, geographer and doctor, but above all other things, 

 a theologian. He threw himself with zeal into medical studies, 

 and acquired in them such a reputation that the Archbishop of 

 Vienna made him his physician ; but his real interest in such 

 studies lay in his belief that the study of anatomy was one 

 of the paths which lead to a knowledge of God. To know, said 

 he, the spirit of God, we must know the spirit of man ; and to 

 truly know the spirit of man, w r e must know 7 the structure and 

 working of the body in which that spirit resides. This led him 

 to introduce anatomical disquisitions into his theological works. 

 These were in the main two ; one was entitled Be Trinitatis 

 Erroribus, published in 1531, through which he stands out in 

 history as the pioneer of Unitarian doctrine. The other, the 

 one which most concerns us here, was the Restitutio Chmstian- 

 ismi, published in 1553, but ready in manuscript long before. 

 I need not dwell on Servetus' story here. Everyone knows 

 how in 1553, on Oct. 27, he was burnt at the stake in Geneva 

 at the bidding of Calvin, because he would not recant his 

 religious faith. With him, or at the same time, there was burnt 

 the whole edition of 1000 copies of his book, the Restitutio, 

 with the exception of some few copies which had passed into 

 the hands of friends. 



In the Restitutio occurs this remarkable passage : 

 "In order, however, that we may understand how the 

 " blood is the very life, we must first learn the generation 

 " in substance of the vital spirit itself which is composed and 

 "nourished out of the inspired air and very subtle blood. The 

 "vital spirit has its origin in the left ventricle of the heart, 

 " the lungs especially helping towards its perfection : it is a 

 " thin spirit, elaborated by the power of heat, of a yellow 

 " (light) colour, of a fiery potency so that it is as it were a 



