2J2 Traxsactioxs of the Americax Ixstitute. 



back as tlie latter part of the thirteenth century, Arnold de Villa 

 Nova was a noted physician and chemist. The missile usual in such 

 cases was hurled at him. He was charged with sorcery and dealing:^ 

 with the devil. He was excommunicated, and driven from Spain. 

 Such seemed the fate of all men in that field, who gained even a 

 glimmer of new scientific truth. Men even like Cardan, and Para- 

 celsus, and Porta, who pandered to popular superstition, were at once 

 set upon if they ventured on any other than the path which the church 

 thought sound, the insufiicient path of Aristotelian investigation. We 

 have seen that the weapons used against the astronomers were mainly 

 the epithets infidel and atheist. We have also seen that the princi])al 

 missiles against chemists and physicists, were the epithets sorcerer and 

 leaguer Avith the devil, and we have picked up on various battle-fields 

 another eftective weapon, the ej^ithet Mahometan. On the heads of 

 the anatomists and physicians M'ere concentrated all these missiles. 

 The charge of atheism ripened into a proverb : " Ubi sunt tres medlci 

 ihi sunt duo atheV (Where you find three physicians, ^'ou find two 

 atheists.) Magic seemed so common a charge that many of the physi- 

 cians seemed to believe it themselves. Mahometanisra and Averroisni 

 became almost synonymous with medicine, and Petrarch stigmatized 

 Averroists as men who denied genius and barked at Christ. Not to 

 weary you with the details of earlier struggles, I will select a great 

 benefactor of mankind, and champion of scientific truth, at the period 

 of the revival of learning and the reformation, Andreas Vesalius, 

 the founder of the modern science of anatomy. The battle waged by 

 this man is one of the glories of our race. The old methods were 

 soon exhausted by his early fervor, and he sought to advance science 

 by strictly scientific means, by patient investigation, and 1)y careful 

 recording of results. From the outset Yesalius proved himself a 

 master. In the search for real knowledge he braved the most terri- 

 ble dangers. Before his time, the dissection of tlie human subject 

 was thought akin to sacrilege. Occasionally, some anatomist like 

 Mundinus had given some little display with such a subject, but for 

 purposes of investigcdion it was placed among things forbidden. 

 Through this sacred conventionalism Vesalius broke without fear. 

 Braving ecclesiastical censure and popular fury, he studied his 

 science by the only method which could give useful results. No 

 peril daunted him. He haunted gibbets and charnel-houses to secure 

 the material for his investigations. In his search he risked alike tlie 

 cruelty of the inrpiisition and the virus of the plague. First of all 



