3 8 BIOLOGY AND ITS MAKERS 



Fallopius was a suave, polite man, who became professor 

 of anatomy at Padua; he opposed Vesalius, but his attacks 

 were couched in respectful terms. 



Eustachius, the professor of anatomy at P.ome, was of a 

 different type, a harsh, violent man, who assailed Vesalius 

 with virulence. He corrected some mistakes of Vesalius, 

 and prepared new plates on anatomy, which, however, were 

 not published until 1754, and therefore did not exert the in- 

 fluence upon anatomical studies that those of Vesalius did. 



The Especial Service of Vesalius. It should be remem- 

 bered that both these men had the advantage of the sketches 

 made under the direction of Vesalius. Pioneers and path- 

 breakers are under special limitations of being in a new 

 territory, and make more errors than they would in following 

 another's survey of the same territory; it takes much less 

 creative force to correct the errors of a first survey than 

 to make the original discoveries. Everything considered, 

 Vesalius is deserving of the position assigned to him. He 

 was great in a larger sense, and it was his researches in 

 particular which re-established scientific method and made 

 further progress possible. His errors were corrected, not by 

 an appeal to authority, but by the method which he founded. 

 His great claim to renown is, not that his work outshone all 

 other work (that of Galen in particular) in accuracy and 

 brilliancy, but that he overthrew dependence on authority 

 and re-established the scientific method of ascertaining truth. 

 It was the method of Aristotle and Galen given anew to the 

 world. 



The spirit of progress was now released from bondage, 

 but we have still a long way to go under its guidance to reach 

 the gateway of modern biology. 



