28 BIOLOGY AND ITS MAKERS 



in Belgium, he went back to Louvain without obtaining his 

 medical degree. After a short experience as surgeon on the 

 field of battle, he went to Padua, whither he was attracted 

 by reports of the opj^ortunities for practical dissection that 

 he so much desired to undertake. There his talents were 

 recognized, and just after receiving his degree of Doctor of 

 Medicine in 1537, he was given a post in surgery, with the 

 care of anatomy, in the university. 



His Reform of the Teaching of Anatomy. — The sympa- 

 thetic and graphic description of this j)eriod of his career by 

 Sir ^Michael Foster is so good that I can not refrain from 

 quoting it: "He at once began to teach anatomy in his own 

 new^ way. Not to unskilled, ignorant barbers would he en- 

 trust the task of laying bare before the students the secrets of 

 the human frame; his own hand, and his own hand alone, 

 was cunning enough to track out the pattern of the structures 

 which day by day w^ere becoming more clear to him. Fol- 

 lowing venerated customs, he began his academic labors by 

 'reading' Galen, as others had done before him, using his 

 dissections to illustrate what Galen had said. But, time after 

 time, the body on the table said something different from 

 that which Galen had written. 



"He tried to do what others had done before him — he 

 tried to believe Galen rather than his own eyes, but his eyes 

 were too strong for him; and in the end he cast Galen and 

 his writings to the winds, and taught only what he himself 

 had seen and what he could make his students see, too. 

 Thus he brought into anatomy the new spirit of the time, 

 and the men of the time, the young men of the time, answered 

 the new voice. Students flocked to his lectures; his hearers 

 amounted, it is said, to some five hundred, and an enlightened 

 senate recognized his worth by repeatedly raising his emol- 

 uments. 



"Five years he thus spent in untiring labors at Padua. 



