go PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION. 



to Venice. For these cumulative crimes he was im- 

 prisoned and, after two years, condemned to be put 

 to death " as mercifully as possible and without the 

 shedding of his blood," a Catholic euphemism for 

 burning a man alive. The murder was committed 

 in Rome on 17th of February, 1600. 



The year 1543 marks an epoch in biology as in 

 astronomy. As shown in the researches of Galen, 

 an Alexandrian physician of the second century, 

 there had been no difficulty in studying the struc- 

 ture of the lower animals, but, fortified both by tradi- 

 tion and by prejudice, the Church refused to permit 

 dissection of the human body, and in the latter part 

 of the thirteenth century, Boniface VIII. issued a 

 Bull of the major excommunication against offend- 

 ers. Prohibition, as usual, led to evasion, and Ve- 

 salius, Professor of Anatomy in Padua University, 

 resorted to various devices to procure "subjects," 

 the bodies of criminals being easiest to obtain. The 

 end justified the means, as he was able to correct 

 certain errors of Galen, and to give the quietus to 

 the old legend, based upon the myth of the creation 

 of Eve, that man has one rib less than woman. This 

 was among the discoveries announced in his De Cor- 

 poris Humani Fabrica, published when he was only 

 twenty- eight years of age. The book fell under the 

 ban of the Church because Vesalius gave no support 

 to the belief in an indestructible bone, nucleus of 

 the resurrection body, in man. The belief had, no 

 doubt, near relation to that of the Jews in the os 



