Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/382



I was received by that noble citizen of Florence and excellent physician, the most virtuous, the most lovable, and the most domestic man whom I have ever met.

Guidi's treatise on anatomy was first published at Venice (under the editorship of his nephew) in 1611—i.e., forty-two years after his death. His translations from the Greek treatises of Hippocrates, Galen and Oribasius will be found in the work which bears the title "Collectio Chirurgica Parisina," Paris, 1544.

Berengarius of Carpi (a small town in Northern Italy), who died in 1530, is pronounced by Kurt Sprengel a worthy predecessor of Vesalius. He was Professor of Anatomy, first at Pavia and then at Bologna (from 1502 to 1527), and he is reported to have dissected more than one hundred(!) cadavers during that period. Fallopius and Eustachius were among his pupils, and it was their opinion that he did more than anybody else to revive the interest in anatomical work. The famous sculptor, Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571), is authority for the statement that Berengarius was not only an experienced anatomist and practicing physician, but also a very skilful draughtsman; the three works which he published being illustrated with a certain number of original woodcuts that are not without interest both to the anatomist and to the lover of art.

Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) was born at Brussels, of German parents whose home was located at Wessels on the Rhine,—whence the name "Vesalius." His father was the apothecary of the Princess Margaretha, Charles the Fifth's aunt, and several of his ancestors had been physicians of considerable distinction. At Louvain he received, in early youth, a thorough training in the Latin, Greek and Arabic languages and also in mathematics. When he was about eighteen years of age, he visited Montpellier and afterward Paris, at which latter city he received practical instruction in anatomy from the three men whose names I have mentioned in the preceding paragraph—viz., Guido Guidi, Jacques DuBois and Winther of Andernach. The instruction in anatomy given in Paris at that period (about 1533) consisted in interpretations of Galen's teachings, in dis