OVERTHROW OF AUTHORITY IN SCIENCE 27 
to time dogs were brought into the amphitheater and their 
structure exposed by unskilled barbers. 
Vesalius.—Vesalius now came upon the scene; and 
through his efforts, before he was thirty years of age, the idol 
of authority had been shattered, and, mainly through his 
persistence, the method of so great moment to future ages 
had been established. He was well fitted to do battle against 
tradition—strong in body, in mind, and in purpose, gifted 
and forceful; and, furthermore, his work was marked by 
concentration and by the high moral quality of fidelity to 
truth. 
Vesalius was born in Brussels on the last day of the year 
1514, of an ancestry of physicians and learned men, from 
whom he inherited his leaning toward scientific pursuits. 
Early in life he exhibited a passion for anatomy; he dissected 
birds, rabbits, dogs, and other animals. Although having 
a strong bent in this direction, he was not a man of single 
talent. He was schooled in all the learning of his time, 
and his earliest publication was a translation from the Greek 
of the ninth book of Rhazes. After his early training at 
Brussels and at the University of Louvain, in 1533, at the 
age of 18, he went to Paris to study medicine, where, in 
anatomy, he came under Sylvius and Giinther. 
His Force and Independence.—His impetuous nature was 
shown in the amphitheatre of Sylvius, where, at the third 
lecture, he pushed aside the clumsy surgeon barbers, and 
himself exposed the parts as they should be. He could not 
be satisfied with the exposition of the printed page; he must 
see with his own eyes, must grasp through his own expe- 
rience the facts of anatomical structure. This demand of 
his nature shows not only how impatient he was with 
sham, but also how much more he was in touch with reality 
than were the men of his time. 
After three years at the French capital, owing to wars 
