228 STUDIES IN INSECT LIFE, ETC. 

 have come down to us, and if we inquire what 

 books and writings were available, they will be 

 found to fall under the three headings, Medicine, 

 Fieldcraft, and Heraldry. From these subjects 

 the paths of progress in that science were ad- 

 vancing and converging. 



The year that saw the birth of Shakespeare 

 witnessed in the remote island of Zante the 

 death of Vesalius, who, as a medical student at 

 a hospital in Venice, had rubbed shoulders with 

 a young soldier, Ignatius Loyola, who six years 

 later founded the Order of the Jesuits. Vesalius, 

 who was born at Brussels on the last day of the 

 year 1514, was the first biologist to abandon 

 authority. Dispensing with the aid of unskilled 

 barbers, he dissected the human body with his 

 own hands. Like Harvey, whose discovery of 

 the circulation of the blood dates but three years 

 after Shakespeare's death, he 



" Sought for Truth in Truth's own Book, 

 The creatures, which by God Himself was writ, 



And wisely thought 'twas fit, 

 Not to read Comments only upon it, 



But on the original itself to look." 



At the beginning of his scientific career, like 

 his master Sylvius, Professor at the College of 



