ication of the "Fabrica" shook the medical world to its
foundations. Galen ruled supreme in the schools: to doubt him in the
least particular roused the same kind of feeling as did doubts on the
verbal inspiration of the Scriptures fifty years ago! His old teachers
in Paris were up in arms: Sylvius, nostrae aetatis medicorum decus, as
Vesalius calls him, wrote furious letters, and later spoke of him as
a madman (vaesanus). The younger men were with him and he had many
friends, but he had aroused a roaring tide of detraction against which
he protested a few years later in his work on the "China-root," which
is full of details about the "Fabrica." In a fit of temper he threw
his notes on Galen and other MSS. in the fire. No sadder page exists in
medical writings than the one in which Vesalius tells of the burning of
his books and MSS. It is here reproduced and translated.(23) His life
for a couple of years is not easy to follow, but we know that in 1546
he took service with Charles V as his body physician, and the greatest
anatomist of his age was lost in the wanderings of court and campaigns.
He became an active practitioner, a distinguished surgeon, much
consulted by his colleagues, and there are references to many of his
cases, the most important of which are to internal aneurysms, which he
was one of the first to recognize. In 1555 he brought out the second
edition of the "Fabrica," an even more sumptuous volume than the first.

(23) Epistle on China-root, 1546, p. 196. Vesalius may be quoted
in explanation--in palliation:

"All these impediments I made light of; for I was too young to seek
gain by my art, and I was sustained by my eager desire to learn and to
promote the studies in which I shared. I say nothing of my diligence in
anatomizing--those who attended my lectures in Italy know how I spent
three whole weeks over a single public dissection. But consider that in
one year I once taught in three different universities. If I had put
off the task of writing till this time; if I were now just beginning
to digest my materials; students would not have had the use of my
anatomical labours, which posterity may or may not judge superior to
the rechauffes formerly in use, whether of Mesua, of Gatinaria, of some
Stephanus or other on the differences, causes and symptoms of diseases,
or, lastly, of a part of Servitor's pharmacopoeia. As to my notes, which
had grown into a huge volume, they were all destroyed by