5° BIOLOGY AND ITS MAKERS 
fully grasped the idea of the movement of the blood in a 
complete circuit. 
Servetus, in his work on the Restoration of Christianity 
(Restitutio Christianismi, 1553), the work for which Calvin 
accomplished his burning at the stake, expressed more 
clearly than Galen had done the idea of a circuit of blood 
through the lungs. According to his view, some of the blood 
took this course, while he still admits that a part may exude 
through the wall of the ventricle from the right to the left 
side. This, however, was embodied in a theological treatise, 
and had little direct influence in bringing about an altered 
view of the circulation. Nevertheless, there is some reason 
to think that it may have been the original source of the ideas 
of the anatomist Columbus, as the studies into the character 
of that observer by Michael Foster seem to indicate. 
Realdus Columbus, professor of anatomy at Rome, ex- 
pressed a conception almost identical with that of Servetus, 
and as this was in an important work on anatomy, published 
in 1559, and well known to the medical men of the period, 
it lay in the direct line of anatomical thought and had greater 
influence. Foster suggests that the devious methods of 
Columbus, and his unblushing theft of intellectual property 
from other sources, give ground for the suspicion that he had 
appropriated this idea from Servetus without acknowledg- 
ment. Although Calvin supposed that the complete edition 
of a thousand copies of the work of Servetus had been burned 
with its author in 1553, a few copies escaped, and possibly 
one of these had been examined by Columbus. This as- 
sumption is strengthened by the circumstance that Columbus 
gives no record of observations, but almost exactly repeats 
the words of Servetus. 
Cesalpinus, the botanist and medical man, expressed in 
1571 and 1593 similar ideas of the movement of the blood 
(probably as a matter of argument, since there is no record 
