That is Andreas Vesalius, of Brussels, dreaded and hated by
the doctors of the old school--suspect, moreover, it would seem to
inquisitors and theologians, possibly to Alva himself; for he has dared
to dissect human bodies; he has insulted the mediaevalists at Paris,
Padua, Bologna, Pisa, Venice, in open theatre; he has turned the heads of
all the young surgeons in Italy and France; he has written a great book,
with prints in it, designed, some say, by Titian--they were actually done
by another Netherlander, John of Calcar, near Cleves--in which he has
dared to prove that Galen's anatomy was at fault throughout, and that he
had been describing a monkey's inside when he had pretended to be
describing a man's; and thus, by impudence and quackery, he has wormed
himself--this Netherlander, a heretic at heart, as all Netherlanders are,
to God as well as to Galen--into the confidence of the late Emperor
Charles V., and gone campaigning with him as one of his physicians,
anatomising human bodies even on the battle-field, and defacing the
likeness of Deity; and worse than that, the most religious King Philip is
deceived by him likewise, and keeps him in Madrid in wealth and honour;
and now, in the prince's extreme danger, the king has actually sent for
him, and bidden him try his skill--a man who knows nothing save about
bones and muscles and the outside of the body, and is unworthy the name
of a true physician.

One can conceive the rage of the old Spanish pedants at the
Netherlander's appearance, and still more at what followed, if we are to
believe Hugo Bloet of Delft, his countryman and contemporary. {10}
Vesalius, he says, saw that the surgeons had bound up the wound so tight
that an abscess had formed outside the skull, which could not break: he
asserted that the only hope lay in opening it; and did so, Philip having
given leave, "by two cross-cuts. Then the lad returned to himself, as if
awakened from a profound sleep, affirming that he owed his restoration to
life to the German doctor."

Dionysius Daza, who was there with the other physicians and surgeons,
tells a different story: "The most learned, famous, and rare Baron
Vesalius," he says, advised that the skull should be trepanned; but his
advice was not followed.

Olivarez's account agrees with that of Daza. They had opened the wounds,
he says, down to the skull before Vesalius came. Vesalius insisted that
the injury lay inside the skull, and wished to pierce