Of the numerous editions of the Fabrica there are three which are highly prized, namely, the first one, 1543; the second, issued in 1555, containing eight hundred and twenty-four pages, with many changes in the text; and the 1725 edition of the collected writings of Vesalius. The last named is a huge volume which was published at Leyden under the supervision of Boerhaave and Albinus, with the illustrations cut in copper by Jan Wandelaar[27].
It contains the Fabrica, the Epitome, the Epistola de Radicis Chynae, various anatomical treatises of a controversial character, and the Chirurgia Magna which has been wrongly attributed to Vesalius. Morley says of this book:—“After his death a great work on surgery appeared, in seven books, signed with his name, and commonly included among his writings. There is reason, however, to believe that his name was stolen to give value to the book, which was compiled and published by a Venetian, Prosper Bogarucci, a literary crow, who fed himself upon the dead man’s reputation”.
Vesalius, having finished the Fabrica, intended to write a work on the practice of medicine which should be based on pathology. He makes mention of this in the preface of the Fabrica, and in numerous places in the body of the book he describes the pathologic appearances which he found in dissection.
Returning to Padua after a year’s absence, he found that the University for which he had strenuously labored was a very hotbed of opposition. His former pupil and friend, Realdus Columbus, who was now lecturing on anatomy at Padua, had turned against him. How deeply Vesalius was wounded by the man whom he had made, can be appreciated only by those who have been placed in similar circumstances. The controversy between Columbus and Vesalius was of a bitter and personal character.
On all sides the views of Vesalius were attacked, and the defenders of Galen joined hands with men like Columbus in an effort to besmirch the great anatomist. Disgusted with such treatment, Vesalius, early in 1544, went to Pisa. Here he conducted a course in anatomy. Leaving Pisa, he went to Bologna where he made some special dissections upon two bodies. About this time he declined a chair in the University of Pisa which was tendered to him by direction of Cosimo de’ Medici. Tired of the apparently useless effort to make men see the truth, sick of disputes and arguments, persecuted by members of his own profession, in a fit of passion Vesalius threw his manuscripts into the fire and ended his career as a scientist. “Thus”, says Morley, “he destroyed a huge volume of annotations upon Galen; a whole book of Medical Formulae; many original notes upon drugs; the copy of Galen from which he lectured, covered with marginal notes of new observations that had occurred to him while demonstrating; and the paraphrase of the books of Rhazes, in which the knowledge of the Arabians was collated with that of the Greeks and others”.
CHARLES THE FIFTH
While in this frame of mind it is not surprising that he should have accepted the appointment of Archiatrus to Charles the Fifth of Spain.
The great Emperor was now at the zenith of his fame. His kingdom, which reached from South America to the Zuyder Zee, was well under control, but the monarch already contemplated the abdication of the throne in favor of his son Philip, who is known in history as Philip the Second.
Vesalius left Italy and took up his residence at Madrid. He was now in his thirtieth year. As Archiatrus he accompanied the Emperor in the fourth French war, in which he gained his first experience as a military surgeon. He also acted as physician to Charles and to the members of the imperial household. The war ended in September 1544. In January, 1545, Charles went to Brussels, and remained in the Netherlands for many months. Vesalius was now in his native country, and in April, 1546, he visited the graves of his ancestors at Nymwegen and Wesel. In the same year he published a new edition of his treatise on the China root.
On the twenty-fifth day of October, 1555, amid a scene of pomp and splendor, in the presence of the assembled representatives of the Netherlands, Charles formally surrendered to his son all his territories, jurisdiction and authority in the Low-Countries. This was the first of a series of acts by which the Emperor gradually relinquished the reins of power, in order to spend his remaining days in a cloister. Philip thus became the heir to a vast dominion. Vesalius was continued in office as Archiatrus by the new Emperor. From both Charles and Philip, Vesalius received many marks of honor. It was he who rescued Charles from what was thought to be a mortal disease. At a later date, when Philip’s unfortunate son, Don Carlos, received a severe injury to the head, and after the treatment of the Spanish physicians had failed, it was Vesalius who saved his life by an operation. These cures, and the accurate prediction of the death-day of Maximilian d’Egmont, placed the fame of Vesalius at high tide.
Suddenly, early in the year 1564, for a reason which has never been explained satisfactorily, Vesalius left Madrid. Apparently he was at the height of success. He was famous as a physician and surgeon; he was a favorite at the Spanish court; he had amassed a fortune; and seemingly he was destined to pass his remaining days under the most favorable surroundings. As occurs to all great men, he had excited the jealous animosity of many of the members of his profession. The efforts of the Madrid physicians to ignore the talents of one whom they regarded as a foreigner, long since had reacted to the advantage of the Archiatrus.
PHILIP THE SECOND
During the twenty years that he had filled the post of Archiatrus, the scalpel of Vesalius was rusting: but the controversy concerning the infallibility of Galen was still raging. The violent criticisms of Sylvius upon the Fabrica had been silenced by death, but others took up the cause of Galen where Sylvius had left it. But the passing years had brought a new coterie of professors, who, like Fallopius at Padua; Rondelet at Montpellier; Massa at Venice; and Fuchs at Tübingen, were boldly teaching many things that were contrary to Galen.
Life at the Spanish court was not favorable to the study of science. “The hand of the Church”, says Foster[28], “was heavy on the land; the dagger of the Inquisition was stabbing at all mental life, and its torch was a sterilizing flame sweeping over all intellectual activity. The pursuit of natural knowledge had become a crime, and to search with the scalpel into the secrets of the body of man was accounted sacrilege. It was for a life in priest-ridden, ignorant, superstitious Madrid that Vesalius had forsaken the freedom of the Venetian Republic and the bright academic circles of Padua; in Madrid, where, as he himself has said, ‘he could not lay his hand on so much as a dried skull, much less have the chance of making a dissection’. Moreover, he must have felt the loss of Charles, who, whatever his faults, recognized the worth of intellectual efforts, and in many ways had shown his sympathy with Vesalius’s love of knowledge. Such sympathy could not be looked for in the narrow and bigoted Philip”.
About this time Vesalius received a copy of the Observationes Anatomicae of his pupil Fallopius, who, having learned all that his master had taught of anatomy, continued his studies with great skill and industry. Such a book, coming at an opportune time, must have seemed like a voice calling the Archiatrus back to the intellectual life, bringing to his mind’s eye the recollection of his happy days in Italy.
Vesalius travelled to Venice by way of Perpignan. While in Venice he visited the printer, Francesco Sanese, and discussed the publication of a new book which should contain his reply to Fallopius. In a short time he started for Cyprus in company with Jacobo Malatesta, the commander of the Venetian forces in that island. Thence he passed to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Vesalius never returned from that journey. Information of his death reached Brussels towards the end of that year—1564.
What was the reason for this pilgrimage? Various alleged authorities have given different versions, many of which are evidently fictitious. The most reasonable account, which emanates from Spanish-French sources, dates from a letter written January 1, 1565, to the physician Caspar Peucer by Hubert Languer, or Hubertus Languetus, the Huguenot friend of Philip Sidney, which says:—“They say that Vesalius is dead. Doubtless you have heard that he went to Jerusalem. That journey had, as they tell us from Spain, an odd reason. Vesalius, believing a young Spanish nobleman whom he had attended to be dead, obtained leave of the parents to open the body for the sake of inquiring into the cause of the illness, which he had not rightly comprehended. This was granted; but he had no sooner made an incision into the body than he perceived the symptoms of life, and opening the breast, saw the heart beat. The parents coming afterwards to the knowledge of this, were not satisfied with prosecuting him for murder, but accused him to the Inquisition of impiety, in hopes that he would be punished with greater rigor by the judges of that tribunal than by those of the common law. But the King of Spain interposed, and saved him on condition that by way of atoning for the error he should undertake a pilgrimage to the Holy Land”.
The pilgrimage was made, the Holy Sepulcher was visited, and the weary wanderer had started for Padua to take the chair which was made vacant by the death of Fallopius. A violent storm swept the Ionian Sea. Vesalius’s ship was wrecked upon the island of Zakynthos, where, on the fifteenth day of October, 1564, the Archiatrus died of exhaustion.
Such was the miserable end of Andreas Vesalius of Brussels, a man, who, before he had attained his thirtieth year, had become the greatest anatomist that the world has ever seen.
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