Latest / Evolution of Modern Medicine / 21 - Evolution of Modern Medicine by Sir William Osler
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- 0:00Speaker 1: Section twenty of the Evolution of Modern Medicine. This is
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- 0:15Speaker 1: Recording by Rita Buttros. The Evolution of Modern Medicine by
- 0:20Speaker 1: Sir William Osler, Section twenty, Chapter four, The Renaissance and
- 0:27Speaker 1: the rise of anatomy and physiology. Vesalius the same year
- 0:33Speaker 1: fifteen forty two, saw a very different picture in the
- 0:37Speaker 1: far famed city of Padua, nursery of the arts. The
- 0:42Speaker 1: central figure was a man not yet in the prime
- 0:45Speaker 1: of life, and justly full of its pride, as you
- 0:48Speaker 1: may see from his portrait. Like Aristotle and Hippocrates, cradled
- 0:54Speaker 1: and nurtured in an Esculeepian family, Vesalius was from his
- 0:59Speaker 1: childhood a student of nature, and was now a wandering
- 1:03Speaker 1: scholar far from his Belgian home. But in Italy he
- 1:09Speaker 1: had found what neither Louvain nor Paris could give, freedom
- 1:13Speaker 1: in his studies and golden opportunities for research in anatomy.
- 1:19Speaker 1: What an impression he must have made on the student
- 1:21Speaker 1: body at Padua may be judged from the fact that
- 1:25Speaker 1: Shortly after his graduation, in December fifteen thirty seven, at
- 1:30Speaker 1: the age of twenty four, he was elected to the
- 1:33Speaker 1: chair of Anatomy and Surgery. Two things favored him, an
- 1:38Speaker 1: insatiate desire to see and handle for himself the parts
- 1:43Speaker 1: of the human frame, and an opportunity such as had
- 1:47Speaker 1: never before been offered to the teacher to obtain material
- 1:52Speaker 1: for the study of human anatomy. Learned, with all the
- 1:56Speaker 1: learning of the Grecians and of the Arabians, Vesalius grasped
- 2:01Speaker 1: as no modern before him had done, the cardinal fact
- 2:05Speaker 1: that to know the human machine and its working, it
- 2:08Speaker 1: is necessary first to know its parts, its fabric. To
- 2:13Speaker 1: appreciate the work of this great man, we must go
- 2:16Speaker 1: back in a brief review of the growth of the
- 2:19Speaker 1: study of anatomy among the Greeks. Only the Alexandrians knew
- 2:25Speaker 1: human anatomy. What their knowledge was we know its second hand,
- 2:29Speaker 1: but the evidence is plain that they knew a great deal.
- 2:33Speaker 1: Gallan's anatomy was first class, and was based on the
- 2:37Speaker 1: Alexandrians and on his study of the ape and the pig.
- 2:41Speaker 1: We have already noted how much superior was his osteology
- 2:47Speaker 1: to that of Mandinas. Between the Alexandrians and the early
- 2:51Speaker 1: days of the school of Salernum, we have no record
- 2:55Speaker 1: of systematic dissections of the human body. It is even
- 3:00Speaker 1: if these were permitted at Salernum. Newburger states that the
- 3:05Speaker 1: instructions of Frederic the second as two dissections were merely nominal.
- 3:11Speaker 1: How atrocious was the anatomy of the early Middle Ages
- 3:15Speaker 1: may be gathered from the cuts in the works of
- 3:18Speaker 1: Henri de Montville. In the Bodleian Library is a remarkable
- 3:23Speaker 1: Latin anatomical treatise of the late thirteenth century of English provenance,
- 3:30Speaker 1: one illustration from which will suffice to show the ignorance
- 3:33Speaker 1: of the author. Montanus of Bologna, one of the first
- 3:38Speaker 1: men in the Middle Ages to study anatomy from the subject,
- 3:42Speaker 1: was under the strong domination of the Arabians, from whom
- 3:46Speaker 1: he appeared to have received a very imperfect Gallenic anatomy.
- 3:51Speaker 1: From this date we meet with occasional dissections at various schools,
- 3:56Speaker 1: but we have seen that in the elaborate curriculum of
- 3:59Speaker 1: the University of Padua in the middle of the fifteenth
- 4:03Speaker 1: century there was no provision for the study of the
- 4:07Speaker 1: subject even well into the sixteenth century, dissections were not common,
- 4:14Speaker 1: and the old practice was followed of holding a professorial
- 4:18Speaker 1: discourse while the butcher or barber surgeon opened the cavities
- 4:23Speaker 1: of the body. A member of the famous Basil family
- 4:27Speaker 1: of physicians, Felix Plater, has left us in his autobiography
- 4:33Speaker 1: details of the dissections he witnessed at Montpellier between November fourteenth,
- 4:39Speaker 1: fifteen fifty two and January tenth, fifteen fifty seven, only
- 4:45Speaker 1: eleven in number. How difficult it was at that time
- 4:49Speaker 1: to get subjects is shown by the risks they ran
- 4:53Speaker 1: in body snatching expeditions, of which he records three and
- 4:59Speaker 1: now came the real maker of modern anatomy. Andreas Vesalius
- 5:04Speaker 1: had a good start in life of a family long
- 5:08Speaker 1: associated with the profession. His father occupied the position of
- 5:12Speaker 1: apothecary to Charles the Fifth, whom he accompanied on his
- 5:16Speaker 1: journeys and campaigns. Trained at Leuvain, he had from his
- 5:21Speaker 1: earliest youth an ardent desire to dissect and cut up
- 5:26Speaker 1: mice and rats, and even cats and dogs. To Paris,
- 5:31Speaker 1: the strong school of the period, he went in fifteen
- 5:34Speaker 1: thirty three and studied under two men of great renown.
- 5:39Speaker 1: Jacob Silvius and Gintyrius. Both were strong Gallanis and regarded
- 5:45Speaker 1: the Master as an infallible authority. He had as a
- 5:49Speaker 1: fellow pro sector under the latter, the unfortunate Servitus. The
- 5:55Speaker 1: story of his troubles and trials in getting bones and
- 5:58Speaker 1: subjects un may read in Roth's life. Many interesting biographical
- 6:04Speaker 1: details are also to be found in his own writings.
- 6:09Speaker 1: He returned for a time to Luvain, and here he
- 6:12Speaker 1: published his first book, a commentary on the Almansor of Raises,
- 6:18Speaker 1: in fifteen thirty seven. Finding it difficult either in Paris
- 6:23Speaker 1: or Luvain to pursue his anatomical studies, he decided to
- 6:28Speaker 1: go to Italy, where at Venice and Padua the opportunities
- 6:32Speaker 1: were greater. At Venice he attended the practice of a
- 6:36Speaker 1: hospital now a barracks, which was in charge of the
- 6:40Speaker 1: Theatiner order. I show you a photograph of the building,
- 6:45Speaker 1: taken last year. And here a strange destiny brought two
- 6:49Speaker 1: men together. In fifteen thirty seven, another pilgrim was working
- 6:54Speaker 1: in Venice, waiting to be joined by his six disciples.
- 6:59Speaker 1: After a long years of probation, Ignacious Loyola was ready
- 7:03Speaker 1: to start on the conquest of a very different world.
- 7:07Speaker 1: Devoted to the sick and to the poor, he attached
- 7:10Speaker 1: himself to the theatin Or order, and in the wards
- 7:14Speaker 1: of the hospital and the quadrangle, the fiery, dark eyed
- 7:18Speaker 1: little Basque must frequently have come into contact with the sturdy,
- 7:22Speaker 1: young Belgian busy. With his clinical studies and his anatomy.
- 7:28Speaker 1: Both were to achieve phenomenal success, the one in a
- 7:32Speaker 1: few years to revolutionize anatomy, the other within twenty years
- 7:37Speaker 1: to be the controller of universities, the councilor of kings,
- 7:41Speaker 1: and the founder of the most famous order in the
- 7:44Speaker 1: Roman Catholic Church. It was in this hospital that Vesalius
- 7:49Speaker 1: made observations on the China Route, on which he published
- 7:53Speaker 1: a monograph in fifteen forty seven. The Paduan school was
- 7:57Speaker 1: close to Venice and a jsociated with it, so that
- 8:01Speaker 1: the young student had probably many opportunities of going to
- 8:05Speaker 1: and fro. On the sixth of December fifteen thirty seven,
- 8:10Speaker 1: before he had reached his twenty fourth year, and shortly
- 8:14Speaker 1: after taking his degree, he was elected to the chair
- 8:17Speaker 1: of Surgery and Anatomy at Padua. The task Vesalius set
- 8:22Speaker 1: himself to accomplish was to give an accurate description of
- 8:26Speaker 1: all the parts of the human body with proper illustrations.
- 8:31Speaker 1: He must have had abundant material, more probably than any
- 8:35Speaker 1: teacher before him had ever had at his disposal. We
- 8:39Speaker 1: do not know where he conducted his dissections, as the
- 8:43Speaker 1: old amphitheater has disappeared, but it must have been very
- 8:47Speaker 1: different from the tiny one put up by his successor,
- 8:50Speaker 1: Fabricius in fifteen ninety four. Possibly it was only a
- 8:56Speaker 1: temporary building, for he says in the second edition of
- 8:59Speaker 1: the Fabrica that he had a splendid lecture theater which
- 9:03Speaker 1: accommodated more than five hundred spectators. With Vesalius disappeared the
- 9:10Speaker 1: old didactic method of teaching anatomy. He did his own dissections,
- 9:15Speaker 1: made his own preparations, and when human subjects were scarce,
- 9:20Speaker 1: employed dogs, pigs or cats, and occasionally a monkey. For
- 9:25Speaker 1: five years he taught and worked at Padua. He is
- 9:29Speaker 1: known to have given public demonstrations in Bologna and elsewhere
- 9:34Speaker 1: in the China route. He remarks that he once taught
- 9:37Speaker 1: in three universities in one year. The first fruit of
- 9:42Speaker 1: his work is of great importance in connection with the
- 9:45Speaker 1: evolution of his knowledge. In fifteen thirty eight he published
- 9:50Speaker 1: six anatomical tables, issued apparently in single leaves of the
- 9:55Speaker 1: famous Tabulae anatomic Ay. Only two copies are known, one
- 10:00Speaker 1: in the San Marco Library, Venice, and the other in
- 10:04Speaker 1: the possession of Sir John Stirling Maxwell, whose father had
- 10:08Speaker 1: it reproduced in fac simile thirty copies only in eighteen
- 10:13Speaker 1: seventy four. Some of the figures were drawn by Vesalius himself,
- 10:18Speaker 1: and some are from the pencil of his friend and countryman,
- 10:22Speaker 1: Stephan Vancalsar. Those plates were extensively pirated about this time.
- 10:29Speaker 1: He also edited for the Giante some of the anatomical
- 10:33Speaker 1: works of Gellen. We know very little of his private
- 10:38Speaker 1: life at Padua. His most important colleague in the faculty
- 10:42Speaker 1: was the famous Montanas, professor of medicine. Among his students
- 10:47Speaker 1: and associates was the Englishman Caius, who lived in the
- 10:51Speaker 1: same house with him. When the output is considered, he
- 10:55Speaker 1: cannot have had much spare time at Padua. He did
- 10:59Speaker 1: not create human anatomy that had been done by the Alexandrians,
- 11:04Speaker 1: but he studied it in so orderly and thorough a
- 11:07Speaker 1: manner that for the first time in history it could
- 11:10Speaker 1: be presented in a way that explained the entire structure
- 11:14Speaker 1: of the human body. Early in fifteen forty two, the
- 11:18Speaker 1: manuscript was ready, The drawings had been made with infinite care,
- 11:23Speaker 1: the blocks for the figures had been cut, and in
- 11:26Speaker 1: September he wrote to a Poreness, urging that the greatest
- 11:31Speaker 1: pains should be taken with the book, that the paper
- 11:34Speaker 1: should be strong and of equal thickness, the workmen chosen
- 11:38Speaker 1: for their skill, and that every detail of the pictures
- 11:42Speaker 1: must be distinctly visible. He writes with the confidence of
- 11:46Speaker 1: a man who realized this significance of the work he
- 11:49Speaker 1: had done. It is difficult to speak in terms of
- 11:52Speaker 1: moderation of the Fabrica. To appreciate its relative value, one
- 11:58Speaker 1: must compare it with the other animal atomical works of
- 12:01Speaker 1: the period. And for this purpose I put before you
- 12:04Speaker 1: two figures from a textbook on the subject that was
- 12:08Speaker 1: available for students during the first half of the sixteenth century.
- 12:13Speaker 1: In the figures and text of the Fabrica, we have
- 12:17Speaker 1: anatomy as we know it, And let us be honest
- 12:20Speaker 1: and say too largely as Galen knew it. Time will
- 12:24Speaker 1: not allow me to go into the question of the
- 12:27Speaker 1: relations of these two great anatomists. But we must remember
- 12:31Speaker 1: that at this period Gallon ruled supreme and was regarded
- 12:35Speaker 1: in the schools as infallible. And now, after five years
- 12:41Speaker 1: of incessant labor, Vesalius was prepared to leave his much
- 12:45Speaker 1: loved Padua and his devoted students. He had accomplished an
- 12:50Speaker 1: extraordinary work. He knew, I feel sure what he had done.
- 12:55Speaker 1: He knew that the manuscript contained something that the world
- 12:58Speaker 1: had not seen since the great Pergamenian sent the roles
- 13:02Speaker 1: of his Manual of Anatomy among his friends. Too precious
- 13:07Speaker 1: to entrust to any printer, but the best, and the
- 13:10Speaker 1: best in the middle of the sixteenth century was Transulpine.
- 13:14Speaker 1: He was preparing to go north with the precious burden.
- 13:18Speaker 1: We can picture the youthful teacher. He was but twenty
- 13:22Speaker 1: eight among students in a university which they themselves controlled,
- 13:27Speaker 1: some of them, perhaps the very men who five years
- 13:30Speaker 1: before had elected him. At the last meeting with his class,
- 13:35Speaker 1: perhaps giving a final demonstration of the woodcuts, which were
- 13:39Speaker 1: of an accuracy and beauty never seen before by student's eyes,
- 13:44Speaker 1: and reading his introduction, there would be sad hearts at
- 13:48Speaker 1: the parting, For never had anyone taught anatomy as he
- 13:52Speaker 1: had taught it. No one had ever known anatomy as
- 13:56Speaker 1: he knew it. But the strong, confident look was on
- 13:59Speaker 1: his face, and with the courage of youth and sure
- 14:02Speaker 1: of the future, he would picture a happy return to
- 14:05Speaker 1: attack new and untried problems. Little did he dream that
- 14:11Speaker 1: his happy days as student and teacher were finished, that
- 14:15Speaker 1: his work as an anatomist was over, that the most
- 14:18Speaker 1: brilliant and epoch making part of his career as a
- 14:21Speaker 1: professor was a thing of the past. A year or
- 14:26Speaker 1: more was spent at Basil with his friend Oporinus, supervising
- 14:31Speaker 1: the printing of the great work, which appeared in fifteen
- 14:34Speaker 1: forty three with the title De Humeni corporis Fabrica. The
- 14:40Speaker 1: worth of a book, as of a man, must be
- 14:43Speaker 1: judged by results, and so judged The Fabrica is one
- 14:47Speaker 1: of the great books of the world, and would come
- 14:50Speaker 1: in any century of volumes which embraced the richest harvest
- 14:54Speaker 1: of the human mind in medicine. It represents the full
- 14:58Speaker 1: flower of the Renaissance. As a book, it is a
- 15:01Speaker 1: sumptuous tome, a worthy setting of his jewel paper type,
- 15:06Speaker 1: and illustration to match, as you may see for yourselves
- 15:10Speaker 1: in this folio the chef d'uf of any medical library.
- 15:15Speaker 1: In every section, Vessaalius enlarged and corrected the work of
- 15:20Speaker 1: Galen into the details we need not enter. They are
- 15:24Speaker 1: all given in Roth's monograph, and it is a chapter
- 15:27Speaker 1: of ancient history, not specially illuminating. Never did a great
- 15:32Speaker 1: piece of literary work have a better setting. Vessaalius must
- 15:36Speaker 1: have had a keen appreciation of the artistic side of
- 15:40Speaker 1: the art of printing, and he must also have realized
- 15:43Speaker 1: the fact that the masters of the art had by
- 15:46Speaker 1: this time moved north of the Alps. While superintending the
- 15:52Speaker 1: printing of the precious work, in the winter of fifteen
- 15:55Speaker 1: forty two to forty three in Basel, Vessaalius prepared for
- 16:00Speaker 1: the medical school a skeleton from the body of an
- 16:03Speaker 1: executed man, which is probably the earliest preparation of the
- 16:07Speaker 1: kind in Europe. How little anatomy had been studied at
- 16:12Speaker 1: the period may be judged from that fact that there
- 16:15Speaker 1: had been no dissection at Basil since fifteen thirty one.
- 16:20Speaker 1: The specimen is now in the Versallianum, Basil, of which
- 16:24Speaker 1: I show you a picture taken by doctor Harvey Cushing.
- 16:28Speaker 1: From the typographical standpoint, no more superb volume on anatomy
- 16:32Speaker 1: has been issued from any press, except indeed the second edition,
- 16:38Speaker 1: issued in fifteen fifty five. The paper is, as Vesalius directed,
- 16:44Speaker 1: strong and good, but it is not, as he asked,
- 16:47Speaker 1: always of equal thickness. As a rule, it is thick
- 16:51Speaker 1: and heavy, but there are copies on a good paper
- 16:54Speaker 1: of a much lighter quality. The illustrations drawn by his
- 16:59Speaker 1: friend and fellow countrymen van Kalsar, are very much in
- 17:03Speaker 1: advance of anything previously seen, except those of Leonardo. The
- 17:09Speaker 1: title page, one of the most celebrated pictures in the
- 17:13Speaker 1: history of medicine, shows Vesalius in a large amphitheater, an
- 17:18Speaker 1: imaginary one of the artists I am afraid, dissecting a
- 17:22Speaker 1: female subject. He is demonstrating the abdomen to a group
- 17:26Speaker 1: of students about the table, but standing in the auditorium
- 17:30Speaker 1: are elderly citizens and even women. One student is reading
- 17:35Speaker 1: from an open book. There is a monkey on one
- 17:38Speaker 1: side of the picture and a dog on the other.
- 17:41Speaker 1: Above the picture, on a shield are the three weasels
- 17:45Speaker 1: the arms of vesal The reproduction which I show you
- 17:49Speaker 1: here is from the Epitome, a smaller work issued before
- 17:54Speaker 1: the Fabrica, with rather larger plates, two of which represent
- 17:58Speaker 1: nude human bodies, and are not reproduced in the great work.
- 18:03Speaker 1: The freshest and most beautiful copy is the one on Vellum,
- 18:07Speaker 1: which formerly belonged to doctor Meade, now in the British Museum,
- 18:12Speaker 1: and from it this picture was taken. One of the
- 18:16Speaker 1: most interesting features of the book are the full page
- 18:19Speaker 1: illustrations of the anatomy of the arteries, veins and nerves.
- 18:24Speaker 1: They had not, in those days the art of making
- 18:26Speaker 1: corrosion preparations, but they could in some way dissect to
- 18:31Speaker 1: their finest ramifications the arteries, veins and nerves, which were
- 18:36Speaker 1: then spread on boards and dried. Several such preparations are
- 18:40Speaker 1: now at the College of Physicians in London, brought from
- 18:44Speaker 1: Padua by Harvey. The plates of the mussels are remarkably good,
- 18:49Speaker 1: more correct, though not better perhaps on the hull, than
- 18:53Speaker 1: some of Leonardo's Vesalius had no idea of a general circulation.
- 19:00Speaker 1: Though he had escaped from the domination of the Great
- 19:03Speaker 1: Pergamenion in anatomy, he was still his follower in physiology.
- 19:08Speaker 1: The two figures annexed, taking from one of the two
- 19:11Speaker 1: existing copies of the Tabulae Anatomica, are unique in anatomical illustration,
- 19:18Speaker 1: and are of special value as illustrating the notion of
- 19:22Speaker 1: the vascular system that prevailed until Harvey's day. I have
- 19:27Speaker 1: already called your attention to Gallon's view of the two
- 19:30Speaker 1: separate systems, one containing the coarse venous blood for the
- 19:35Speaker 1: general nutrition of the body, the other the arterial full
- 19:40Speaker 1: of a thinner, warmer blood, with which were distributed the
- 19:43Speaker 1: vital spirits and the vital heat. The veins had their
- 19:48Speaker 1: origin in the liver. The superior vena cava communicated with
- 19:53Speaker 1: the right heart, and as Gallant taught, some blood was
- 19:57Speaker 1: distributed to the lungs, but the two systems were closed.
- 20:01Speaker 1: Though Gallan believed there was a communication at the periphery
- 20:05Speaker 1: between the arteries and veins, Bessalius accepted Galin's view that
- 20:11Speaker 1: there is some communication between the venus and arterial systems
- 20:15Speaker 1: through pores in the septum of the ventricles, though he
- 20:19Speaker 1: had his doubts, and in the second edition of his
- 20:22Speaker 1: book fifteen fifty five says that in spite of the
- 20:26Speaker 1: authority of the Prince of physicians. He cannot see how
- 20:31Speaker 1: the smallest quantity of blood could be transmitted through so
- 20:35Speaker 1: dense a muscular septum. Two years before this, fifteen fifty three,
- 20:41Speaker 1: his old fellow student Michael Cervitus, had in his CHRISTIANISMI
- 20:46Speaker 1: Restitutio anatomical touch with one another. The publication of the
- 20:53Speaker 1: Fabrica shook the medical world to its foundations. Galen ruled
- 20:58Speaker 1: supreme in the schools. To doubt him in the least
- 21:01Speaker 1: particular roused the same kind of feeling as did doubts
- 21:06Speaker 1: on the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures. Fifty years ago.
- 21:10Speaker 1: His old teachers in Paris were up in arms. Silvius
- 21:14Speaker 1: nostre etatus medicorum decus, as Visalius calls him, wrote furious
- 21:20Speaker 1: letters and later spoke of him as a madman. Vesenas.
- 21:25Speaker 1: The younger men were with him, and he had many friends,
- 21:29Speaker 1: but he had aroused a roaring tide of detraction, against
- 21:33Speaker 1: which he protested a few years later in his work
- 21:36Speaker 1: on the China Route, which is full of details about
- 21:39Speaker 1: the Fabrica. In a fit of temper, he threw his
- 21:43Speaker 1: notes on Gallon and other manuscripts in the fire. No
- 21:48Speaker 1: sadder page exists in medical writings than the one in
- 21:52Speaker 1: which Vesalius tells of the burning of his books and manuscripts.
- 21:57Speaker 1: It is here reproduced and translated. His life for a
- 22:01Speaker 1: couple of years is not easy to follow, but we
- 22:05Speaker 1: know that in fifteen forty six he took service with
- 22:08Speaker 1: Charles the fifth as his body physician, and the greatest
- 22:12Speaker 1: anatomist of his age was lost in the wanderings of
- 22:16Speaker 1: court and campaigns. He became an active practitioner, a distinguished surgeon,
- 22:23Speaker 1: much consulted by his colleagues, and there are references to
- 22:27Speaker 1: many of his cases, the most important of which are
- 22:30Speaker 1: to internal aneurysms, which he was one of the first
- 22:34Speaker 1: to recognize. In fifteen fifty five he brought out the
- 22:38Speaker 1: second edition of the Fabrica, an even more sumptuous volume
- 22:43Speaker 1: than the first. All these impediments I made light of,
- 22:47Speaker 1: for I was too young to seek gain by my art,
- 22:51Speaker 1: and I was sustained by my eager desire to learn
- 22:54Speaker 1: and to promote the studies in which I shared. I
- 22:58Speaker 1: say nothing of my diligence anatomizing. Those who attended my
- 23:02Speaker 1: lectures in Italy know how I spent three whole weeks
- 23:06Speaker 1: over a single public dissection. But consider that in one
- 23:11Speaker 1: year I once taught in three different universities. If I
- 23:15Speaker 1: had put off the task of writing till this time,
- 23:19Speaker 1: if I were now just beginning to digest my materials,
- 23:23Speaker 1: students would not have had the use of my anatomical labors,
- 23:27Speaker 1: which posterity may or may not judge superior to the
- 23:30Speaker 1: rechchaws formerly in use, whether of Mesua of gatinaria, of
- 23:36Speaker 1: some Stephanus or other on the differences causes and symptoms
- 23:41Speaker 1: of diseases, or lastly of a part of servitors pharmacopoeia.
- 23:47Speaker 1: As to my notes, which had grown into a huge volume,
- 23:51Speaker 1: they were all destroyed by me, and on the same
- 23:54Speaker 1: day there similarly perished the whole of my paraphrase on
- 23:59Speaker 1: the ten Books of of Razes to King al Mansar,
- 24:03Speaker 1: which had been composed by me with far more care
- 24:06Speaker 1: than the one which is prefaced to the ninth book.
- 24:10Speaker 1: With these also went the books of some author or
- 24:12Speaker 1: other on the formulae and preparation of medicines, to which
- 24:17Speaker 1: I had added much matter of my own, which I
- 24:20Speaker 1: judged to be not without utility. And the same fate
- 24:24Speaker 1: overtook all the books of Galen, which I had used
- 24:28Speaker 1: in learning anatomy, and which I had liberally disfigured in
- 24:32Speaker 1: the usual fashion. I was on the point of leaving
- 24:35Speaker 1: Italy and going to court. Those physicians you know of
- 24:40Speaker 1: had made to the Emperor and to the nobles a
- 24:43Speaker 1: most unfavorable report of my books and of all that
- 24:47Speaker 1: is published nowadays for the promotion of study. I therefore
- 24:51Speaker 1: burnt all these works that I have mentioned, thinking at
- 24:55Speaker 1: the same time that it would be an easy matter
- 24:58Speaker 1: to abstain from writing for them future. I must show
- 25:02Speaker 1: that I have since repented more than once of my impatience,
- 25:07Speaker 1: and regretted that I did not take the advice of
- 25:09Speaker 1: the friends who were then with me. There is no
- 25:13Speaker 1: such pathetic tragedy in the history of our profession. Before
- 25:18Speaker 1: the age of thirty, Vesalius had effected a revolution in anatomy.
- 25:23Speaker 1: He became the valued physician of the greatest court of Europe.
- 25:27Speaker 1: But call no man happy till he is dead. A
- 25:30Speaker 1: mystery surrounds his last days. The story is that he
- 25:34Speaker 1: had obtained permission to perform a post mortem examination on
- 25:39Speaker 1: the body of a young Spanish nobleman whom he had attended.
- 25:43Speaker 1: When the body was opened, the spectators, to their horror,
- 25:47Speaker 1: saw the heart beating, and there were signs of life. Accused,
- 25:52Speaker 1: so it is said by the inquisition of murder, and
- 25:56Speaker 1: also of general impiety. He only escaped through the intervention
- 26:00Speaker 1: of the King, with the condition that he make a
- 26:03Speaker 1: pilgrimage to the Holy Land. In carrying this out, in
- 26:07Speaker 1: fifteen sixty four he was wrecked on the island of Zante,
- 26:11Speaker 1: where he died of a fever or of exhaustion in
- 26:15Speaker 1: the fiftieth year of his age. To the North American
- 26:19Speaker 1: Review November nineteen o two, Edith Wharton contributed a poem
- 26:25Speaker 1: on Vesalius Inzante, in which she pictures his life so
- 26:30Speaker 1: full of accomplishment, so full of regrets, regrets accentuated by
- 26:35Speaker 1: the receipt of an anatomical treatise by Fallopius, the successor
- 26:40Speaker 1: to the chair in Padua. She makes him say, there
- 26:46Speaker 1: are two ways of spreading light, to be the candle
- 26:49Speaker 1: or the mirror that reflects it. I let my wick
- 26:52Speaker 1: burn out. There yet remains to spread an answering surface
- 26:56Speaker 1: to the flame that others kindle. But between Mondanus and Vesalius,
- 27:04Speaker 1: anatomy had been studied by a group of men to
- 27:07Speaker 1: whom I must, in passing pay a tribute. The great
- 27:11Speaker 1: artists Raphael Michelangelo and Albrecht Durer were keen students of
- 27:16Speaker 1: the human form. There is an anatomical sketch by Michelangelo
- 27:21Speaker 1: in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, which I here reproduce. Drea's
- 27:26Speaker 1: famous work on human proportion, published in fifteen twenty eight,
- 27:31Speaker 1: contains excellent figures, but no sketches of dissections. But greater
- 27:37Speaker 1: than any of these, and antedating them, is Leonardo da Vinci,
- 27:41Speaker 1: the one universal genius in whom the new Spirit was incarnate,
- 27:46Speaker 1: the Moses, who alone among his contemporaries saw the promised Land.
- 27:52Speaker 1: How far Leonardo was indebted to his friend and fellow
- 27:55Speaker 1: student Delatorre at Pavia, we do not know, nor does
- 28:00Speaker 1: it matter, in face of the indubitable fact that, in
- 28:04Speaker 1: the many anatomical sketches from his hand we have the
- 28:07Speaker 1: first accurate representation of the structure of the body. Glance
- 28:12Speaker 1: at the three figures of the spine which I have
- 28:15Speaker 1: had photographed side by side, one from Leonardo, one from Visalius,
- 28:21Speaker 1: and the other from van Dyck Carter, who did the
- 28:24Speaker 1: drawings in Grey's Anatomy first edition eighteen fifty six. They
- 28:29Speaker 1: are all of the same type scientific anatomical drawings, and
- 28:34Speaker 1: that of Leonardo was done fifty years before Visalius. Compare
- 28:39Speaker 1: to this figure of the bones of the foot with
- 28:42Speaker 1: a similar one from Visalius. Insatiate in experiment, intellectually as
- 28:48Speaker 1: greedy as Aristotle, painter, poet, sculptor, engineer, architect, mathematician, chemist, botanist, aeronaut, musician,
- 29:00Speaker 1: and withal a dreamer and mystic. Full accomplishment in any
- 29:04Speaker 1: one department was not for him. A passionate desire for
- 29:08Speaker 1: a mastery of nature's secrets made him a fierce thing,
- 29:13Speaker 1: replete with too much rage. But for us a record remains.
- 29:18Speaker 1: Leonardo was the first of modern anatomis, and fifty years
- 29:22Speaker 1: later into the breach he made Vesalius entered. End of
- 29:30Speaker 1: section twenty