Twelve Catholic men of science / edited by Sir Bertram Windle.

  • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Twelve Catholic men of science / edited by Sir Bertram Windle. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    42/288 page 26
    family always continued in official medical relation to the Austro-Burgundian ruling family. His grandfather took his father’s place as physician to Mary of Burgundy, and wrote a series of commentaries on the aphorisms of Hippocrates. Vesalius’s own father was the physician and apothecary to Charles V. for a while, and accom- panied the Emperor on journeys and campaigns. With an heredity like this, it will not be surprising to find that Vesalius was tendered and accepted the post of royal physician to Charles V. when he had reached the age and attained the prestige to fit him for such a responsible post. Recent biographers seem to think that the main reason why Vesalius accepted the position offered by Charles V. was that he was disgusted with the persecution of the Galenists and the ecclesiastics in Italy, and that he wished to escape from such un- comfortable surroundings. As a matter of fact, how- ever, he and his family must have looked fonvard for many years to the possibility of his taking this position. After all, there are very few men so deeply interested in science as, for its sake, to refuse advantages, financial and personal, such as were thus held out to Vesalius. From his earliest years he was known for his tendency to be inquisitive with regard to natural objects, and while still a mere boy his anatomical curiosity mani- fested itself in a very practical way. He recalls himself in later years that the bladders with which he learned to swim, and which were also used by the children of the time as play toys for making all sorts of noises, became in his hands objects of anatomical investigation. Anatomy means the cutting up of things, and this Vesalius literally did with the bladders. He noted particularly that they were composed of layers and fibres of various kinds, and later in life, when he was studying the veins in human and animal bodies, he was reminded of these early observations, and pointed out that the vein walls were made up of structures not
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image