of Vesalius's discoveries must be sought, of course, in anatomical history.* 13. "Vesalius," says Portal, in the rapturous strain of one devoted to his own science, "appears to me one Portal's acof the greatest men who ever existed. Let the count of him. astronomers vaunt their Copernicus, the natural philosophers their Galileo and Torricelli, the mathematicians their Pascal, the geographers their Columbus, I shall always place Vesalius above all their heroes. The first study for man is man. Vesalius has had this noble object in view, and has admirably attained it; he has made on himself and his fellows such discoveries as Columbus could only make by travelling to the extremity of the world. The discoveries of Vesalius are of direct importance to man; by acquiring fresh knowledge of his own structure, man seems to enlarge his existence; while discoveries in geography or astronomy affect him but in a indirect manner.' very He proceeds to compare him with Winslow, in order to show how little had been done in the intermediate time. Vesalius seems not to have known the osteology of the ear. His account of the teeth is not complete; but he first clearly described the bones of the feet. He has given a full account of the muscles, but with some mistakes, and was ignorant of a very few. In his account of the sanguineous and nervous systems, the errors seem more numerous. He describes the intestines better than his predecessors, and the heart very well; the organs of generation not better than they, and sometimes omits their discoveries; the brain admirably, little having since been added. وو His human 14. The zeal of Vesalius and his fellow-students for anatomical science led them to strange scenes of adventure. Those services, which have since been thrown dissections. on the refuse of mankind, they voluntarily undertook. Entire affection scorneth nicer hands. They prowled by night in charnel-houses, they dug up the dead from the grave, they climbed the gibbet, in fear and silence, to steal the mouldering carcass of the murderer; the risk of ignominious punishment, and the secret stings of *Portal, i. 394–433. superstitious remorse, exalting no doubt the delight of these useful, but not very enviable, pursuits.* Fate of 15. It may be mentioned here, that Vesalius, after living for some years in the court of Charles and Philip as Vesalius. their physician, met with a strange reverse, characteristic enough of such a place. Being absurdly accused of having dissected a Spanish gentleman before he was dead, Vesalius only escaped capital punishment, at the instance of the inquisition, by undertaking a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, during which he was shipwrecked, and died of famine in one of the Greek islands.† 16. The best anatomists were found in Italy. Other anatomists. But Francis I. invited one of these, Vidus Vidius, to his royal college at Paris; and from that time France had several of respectable name. Such were Charles Etienne, one of the great typographical family, Sylvius and Gonthier.‡ A French writer about 1540, Levasseur, has been thought to have known, at least, the circulation of the blood through the lungs, as well as the valves of the arteries and veins, and their direction, and its purpose; treading closely on an anticipation of Harvey.§ But this seems to be too hastily inferred. Portal has erroneously supposed the celebrated passage of Servetus on the circulation of the blood to be contained in his book de Trinitatis erroribus, published in 1531||, whereas it is really found in the Christianismi Restitutio, which did not appear till 1553. Imperfection 17. The practice of trusting to animal dissection, from which it was difficult for anatomists to extricate of the science. themselves, led some men of real merit into errors. They seem also not to have profited sufficiently by the writings of their predecessors. Massa of Venice, one of the greatest of this age, is ignorant of some things known to Berenger. Many proofs occur in Portal how imperfectly the elder anatomists could yet demonstrate the more delicate parts of the human body. *Portal, p. 395. † Portal. Tiraboschi, ix. 34. Biogr. Univ. [Sprengel, Hist. de la Médecine, vol. iv. p. 6., treats the cause of the pilgrimage of Vesalius, assigned by these writers, as a fable. — 1842.] Portal, i. 330. et post. S Portal, p. 373., quotes the passage, which at first seems to warrant this inference, but is rather obscurely worded. We shall return to this subject when we arrive at Harvey. || P. 300. SECT. III. On Natural History. 18. THE progress of natural history, in all its departments, was very slow, and should of course be estimated by Botany. the additions made to the valuable materials collected by Aristotle, Theophrastus, Dioscorides, and Pliny. The few botanical treatises that had appeared before this time were too meagre and imperfect to require mention. Otto Brunfels of Strasburg was the first who published, in 1530, a superior work, Herbarum vivæ Eicones, in three volumes. folio, with 238 wooden cuts of plants.* Euricius Cordus of Marburg, in his Botanilogicon, or dialogues on plants, displays, according to the Biographie Universelle, but little knowledge of Greek, and still less observation of nature, Cordus has deserved more praise (though this seems Botanical better due to Lorenzo de' Medici), as the first who gardens. established a botanical garden. This was at Marburg, in 1530.† But the fortunes of private physicians were hardly equal to the cost of an useful collection. The university of Pisa led the way by establishing a public garden in 1545, according to the date which Tiraboschi has determined. That of Padua had founded a professorship of botany in 1533. ‡ 19. Ruel, a physician of Soissons, an excellent Greek scholar, had become known by a translation of Dioscorides in 1516, upon which Huet has bestowed high praise. His more celebrated treatise De Natura Stirpium appeared at Paris in 1536, and is one of the handsomest offspring of that press. It is a compilation from the Greek and Latin authors on botany, made with taste and judgment. His knowledge, however, derived from experience was not * Biogr. Univ. + Id. Andrès, xiii. 80. Eichhorn, iii. 304. See, too, Roscoe's Leo X., iv. 125., for some pleasing notices of the early studies in natural history. Pontanus was fond of it; and his poem on the cultivation of the lemon, orange, and citron (De hortis Hesperidum) shows an acquaintance with some of the operations of horticulture. The garden Ruel. of Bembo was also celebrated. Theo- considerable, though he has sometimes given the French names of species described by the Greeks, so far as his limited means of observation and the difference of climate enabled him. Many later writers have borrowed from Ruel their general definitions and descriptions of plants, which he himself took from Theophrastus.* Fuchs. 20. Ruel, however, seems to have been left far behind by Leonard Fuchs, professor of medicine in more than one German university, who has secured a verdant immortality in the well-known Fuchsia. Besides many works on his own art, esteemed in their time, he published at Basle in 1542 his Commentaries on the History of Plants, containing above 500 figures, a botanical treatise frequently reprinted, and translated into most European languages. "Considered as a naturalist, and especially as a botanist, Fuchs holds a distinguished place, and he has thrown a strong light on that science. His chief object is to describe exactly the plants used in medicine; and his prints, though mere outlines, are generally faithful. He shows that the plants and vegetable products mentioned by Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Hippocrates, and Galen had hitherto been ill known.”† 21. Matthioli, an Italian physician, in a peaceful retreat near Trent, accomplished a laborious repertory of Matthioli. medical botany in his Commentaries on Dioscorides, published originally, 1544, in Italian, but translated by himself into Latin, and frequently reprinted throughout Europe. Notwithstanding a bad arrangement, and the author's proneness to credulity, it was of great service at a time when no good work on that subject was in existence in Italy; and its reputation seems to have been not only general, but of long duration. ‡ Low state of zoology. 22. It was not singular that much should have been published, imperfect as it might be, on the natural history of plants, while that of animal nature, as a matter of science, lay almost neglected. The importance of vegetable products in medicine was far more extensive and various; while the ancient treatises, which formed substan * Biogr. Univ. (by M. du Petit Thouars). Corniani, vi. 5. + Id. tially the chief knowledge of nature possessed in the sixteenth century, are more copious and minute on the botanical than the animated kingdom. Hence we find an absolute dearth of books relating to zoology. That of P. Jovius de piscibus Romanis is rather one of a philologer and a lover of good cheer than a naturalist, and treats only of the fish eaten at the Roman tables.* Gillius devi et natura animalium is little else than a compilation from Ælian and other ancient authors, though Niceron says that the author has interspersed some observations of his own. No work of the least importance, even for that time, can perhaps be traced in Europe on any part of zoology, before the Avium præcipuarum historia of our countryman Turner, published at Cologne in 1548, though this is confined to species described by the ancients. Gesner, in his Pandects, which bear date in the same year, several times refers to it with commendation. ‡ Agricola. 23. Agricola, a native of Saxony, acquired a perfect knowledge of the processes of metallurgy from the miners of Chemnitz, and perceived the immense resources that might be drawn from the abysses of the earth. "He is the first mineralogist," says Cuvier, "who appeared after the revival of science in Europe. He was to mineralogy what Gesner was to zoology; the chemical part of metallurgy, and especially what relates to assaying, is treated with great care, and has been little improved down to the end of the eighteenth century. It is plain that he was acquainted with the classics, the Greek alchemists, and many manuscripts. Yet he believed in the goblins, to whom miners ascribe the effects of mephitic exhalations.” § * Andrès, xiii. 143. Roscoe's Leo X. ubi supra. † Vol. xxiii. Biogr. Univ. xiii. 144. Andrès, Ges Pandect. Univers., lib. 14. ner may be said to make great use of Turner; a high compliment from so illustrious a naturalist. He quotes also a book on quadrupeds lately printed in |