which had been long gathering burst upon him.
The old school, trembling for their time-honoured reign, bespattered,
with all that pedantry, ignorance, and envy could suggest, the man who
dared not only to revolutionise surgery, but to interfere with the
privileged mysteries of medicine; and, over and above, to become a
greater favourite at the court of the greatest of monarchs. While such
as Eustachius, himself an able discoverer, could join in the cry, it is
no wonder if a lower soul, like that of Sylvius, led it open-mouthed. He
was a mean, covetous, bad man, as George Bachanan well knew; and,
according to his nature, he wrote a furious book--"Ad Vesani calumnias
depulsandas." The punning change of Vesalius into Vesanus (madman) was
but a fair and gentle stroke for a polemic, in days in which those who
could not kill their enemies with steel or powder, held themselves
justified in doing so, if possible, by vituperation, calumny, and every
engine of moral torture. But a far more terrible weapon, and one which
made Vesalius rage, and it may be for once in his life tremble, was the
charge of impiety and heresy. The Inquisition was a very ugly place. It
was very easy to get into it, especially for a Netherlander: but not so
easy to get out. Indeed Vesalius must have trembled, when he saw his
master, Charles V., himself take fright, and actually call on the
theologians of Salamanca to decide whether it was lawful to dissect a
human body. The monks, to their honour, used their common sense, and
answered Yes. The deed was so plainly useful that it must be lawful
likewise. But Vesalius did not feel that he had triumphed. He dreaded,
possibly, lest the storm should only have blown over for a time. He
fell, possibly, into hasty disgust at the folly of mankind, and despair
of arousing them to use their common sense, and acknowledge their true
interest and their true benefactors. At all events, he threw into the
fire--so it is said--all his unpublished manuscripts, the records of long
years of observation, and renounced science thenceforth.

We hear of him after this at Brussels, and at Basle likewise--in which
latter city, in the company of physicians, naturalists, and Grecians, he
must have breathed awhile a freer air. But he seems to have returned
thence to his old master Charles V., and to have finally settled at
Madrid as a court surgeon to Philip II., who sent him, but too late, to
extract the lance splinters