explained the discrepancy by saying that the
wearing of narrow garments by the moderns had straightened the limbs.

Through these attacks, however, the writings of Vesalius fell into
somewhat bad odour in the court; for in that very superstitious age
there was a kind of vague dread felt of reading the works of a man
against whom such serious charges of arrogance and impiety were brought.
And so it came about that when he received the summons to take up his
residence permanently at Madrid, and the orthodoxy of the day seemed for
the moment to triumph, in a fit of proud indignation, he burned all his
manuscripts; destroying a huge volume of annotations upon Galen; a whole
book of medical formulae; many original notes on drugs; the copy of Galen
from which he lectured, and which was covered with marginal notes of new
observations that had occurred to him while demonstrating; and the
paraphrases of the books of Rhases, in which the knowledge of the
Arabian was collated with that of the Greeks and others. The produce of
the labour of many years was thus reduced to ashes in a short fit of
passion, and from this time Vesalius lived no more for controversy or
study. He gave himself up to pleasure and the pursuit of wealth, resting
on his reputation and degenerating into a mere courtier. As a
practitioner he was held in high esteem. When the life of Don Carlos,
Philip's son, was despaired of, it was Vesalius who was called in, and
who, seeing that the surgeons had bound up the wound in the head so
tightly that an abscess had formed, promptly brought relief to the
patient by cutting into the pericranium. The cure of the prince,
however, was attributed by the court to the intercession of St. Diego,
and it is possible that on the subject of this alleged miraculous
recovery Vesalius may have expressed his opinion rather more strongly
than it was safe for a Netherlander to do. At any rate, the priests
always looked upon him with dislike and suspicion, and at length they
and the other enemies of the great anatomist had their revenge.

A young Spanish nobleman had died, and Vesalius, who had attended him,
obtained permission to ascertain, if possible, by a post-mortem
examination, the cause of death. On opening the body, the heart was
said--by the bystanders--to beat; and a charge, not merely of murder,
but of impiety also, was brought against Vesalius. It was hoped by his
persecutors that the latter charge would be brought before the