s who came in such numbers to Rome, made it a custom at this
time to attend one or more of Columbus's anatomical lectures. They
were looked upon as one of the features of the Roman university life
of the time. How much good was accomplished by this can scarcely be
estimated. The example must have had great influence especially on
members of faculties of various educational institutions who came to
the Papal See. To some degree at least these interesting teaching
methods must have aroused in such men the desire to see them emulated
in their own teaching institutions, and therefore must have done much
to advance medical education. The fact that these things were done in
the Papal Medical School only emphasized the significance of them for
ecclesiastics, and made them more ready to bring about their imitation
in other teaching centers.

How well the Popes were justified in their estimation of Columbus's
genius as an anatomical investigator will be best appreciated from his
discovery of the pulmonary circulation, which formed, as Harvey
confesses at the beginning of his work on the circulation, the
foundation on which Harvey's great discovery naturally arose. It is
probable that Columbus would not have come to Rome, in spite of the
flattering offers held out to him, only that he was already the
personal friend of a number of high ecclesiastics, and even of the
Pope who extended the invitation. How well the Popes continued to
think of Columbus after his years of work in the {235} Roman Medical
School will be well understood from the fact that, when his great work
_De Re Anatomica_ was published after his death by his sons, Pope Pius
IV. accepted the dedication of it. This was of course not an unusual
thing, for many books on other sciences were dedicated to the Popes,
and the example thus set was subsequently imitated. Twenty-five years
later, Professor Piccolomini dedicated his Anatomical Lectures to Pope
Sixtus V. Subsequent anatomical publications of the Papal Medical
School were issued under like patronage. The famous edition of
Eustachius's anatomical sketches, published under the editorship of
Lancisi, is a notable example of this, and went to press mainly at the
expense of Pope Clement XI., who realized how valuable they were
likely to be for the teaching of anatomy.

These two great discoverers in anatomy, Columbus and Eustachius, were
succeeded, as is so often the case in the history of university
faculties, by a