FROM PARACELSUS TO HARVEY 



attention of the Inquisition, and it was only by the 

 intervention of the king himself that the anatomist 

 escaped the usual fate of those accused by that 

 tribunal. As it was, he was obliged to perform a 

 pilgrimage to the Holy Land. While returning from 

 this he was shipwrecked, and perished from hunger 

 and exposure on the island of Zante. 



At the very time when the anatomical writings of 

 Vesalius were startling the medical world, there was 

 living and working contemporaneously another great 

 anatomist, Eustachius (died 1574), whose records of 

 his anatomical investigations were ready for publica- 

 tion only nine years after the publication of the work 

 of Vesalius. Owing to the unfortunate circumstances 

 of the anatomist, however, they were never published 

 during his lifetime not, in fact, until 1714. When 

 at last they were given to the world as Anatomical 

 Engravings, they showed conclusively that Eustachius 

 was equal, if not superior to Vesalius in his knowledge 

 of anatomy. It has been said of this remarkable 

 collection of engravings that if they had been pub- 

 lished when they were made in the sixteenth century, 

 anatomy would have been advanced by at least two 

 centuries. But be this as it may, they certainly show 

 that their author was a most careful dissector and 

 observer. 



Eustachius described accurately for the first time 

 certain structures of the middle ear, and rediscovered 

 the tube leading from the ear to the throat that bears 

 his name. He also made careful studies of the teeth 

 and the phenomena of first and second dentition. He 

 was not baffled by the minuteness of structures and 



VOL. II. 12 



