VILLENEUVE, we must presume, had reached Lyons poor enough in pocket if rich in lore; but so diligently had he laboured and so liberally had he been paid by the princely publishers of the day, that within two years he found himself in funds sufficient to authorise a return to Paris with a view to the study of Medicine, which he had now resolved to make his profession for life. The rebuff he had had from Ecolampadius, Bucer, and the rest, had probably sickened him for a while with theology and scholasticism, from which, however, we may presume he had only been diverted by his failure to make an immediate impression on the Reformers and the necessity of providing for his daily wants. But the fresh fields and pastures new' brought into sight by the study of Ptolemy, and the healthy influence of Champier, the physician and naturalist, gave another turn to his mind, and with the money he had earned in his purse, but still comporting himself as the poor scholar, he entered first the College of Calvi,

and then that of the Lombards. To these as a subject. of the Holy Roman Empire he probably had ready access, and in their quiet shades devoted himself to the new course of study he had determined to pursue.

His larger experience and intercourse with Champier must have shown Servetus that medicine was a more assured means of earning a subsistence than theology, and opened up a far wider field to his ambition than continued service with the typographers. Without utterly neglecting older studies, therefore, he now gave his chief attention to the great and useful art and science of medicine; and we shall find as we proceed that the lessons of such teachers as Joannes Guinterus (Jo. Winter of Andernach), Jacobus Sylvius (J. du Bois), Joannes Fernelius, and others of name and fame in their day, found congenial soil in the receptive mind of the student.

Servetus, indeed, would seem immediately to have made his presence felt in the medical school of Paris; he was at once more than a listener to the prelections of its professors. Associated with no less distinguished an individual than Andrea Vesalius, he was one of Winter of Andernach's two prosectors, and prepared the subject for each day's demonstration.

And let not the conjunction of talent that meets us here be overlooked. Vesalius, repudiating the authority of Galen, became the restorer-the Creator of Modern Anatomy. Servetus, breaking with scholasticism in theology, and freeing himself from the shackles of Greeks and Arabians in practical medicine, inaugu

rated Rational Physiology when he proclaimed the course of the blood from the right to the left side of the heart through the lungs. Working together as friends and fellow students for the Professor of Anatomy, Vesalius and Servetus, through diversity of mental constitution, yet saw things diversely. Vesalius, the observer, abiding by the concrete, described with rare felicity and truthfulness what he witnessed; Servetus, gifted with genius, aspiring to the ideal and inferring consequences, deduced the pulmonary circulation from the structure of the heart and lungs !

Nor were the two men associates only in their studies; they were fellows also in the untoward fate that befel them both in after life; for both may be said to have fallen victims to their zeal. Somewhat precipitate, we may presume, in his eagerness for information, the heart of a young nobleman who had died under his care and whose body Vesalius was inspecting, was either seen to palpitate, or was thought to have palpitated, when touched by the knife of the anatomist. Accused forthwith of murder, it was only by the interference of Philip II. of Spain, whose physician Vesalius was, that a formal trial for manslaughter was commuted for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem with confession and absolution at the shrine of the Holy Sepulchre. The penance was undergone, but the pilgrim, homeward bound, suffered shipwreck on the island of Crete, and perished miserably there. Servetus again, as we shall see, in his eagerness to proclaim what he believed to be

the truth, and given no chance for his life, had to abide the still more cruel death of the faggot and stake.

Joannes Guinterus, it is interesting to know, bears honourable testimony to the merits of his two assistants. In the preface to his 'Anatomical Institutions' he informs us that 'he had been most effectually aided in the preparation of the work, first by Andrea Vesalius, a young man, by Hercules! singularly proficient in anatomy; and after him by Michael Villanovanus, distinguished by his literary acquirements of every kind, and scarcely second to any in his knowledge of Galenical doctrine. Under the supervision and with the aid of these two,' he continues, I have myself examined in the Subject and have shown to the students the whole of the muscles, veins, arteries, and nerves, both of the extremities and internal parts of the body.' From this we learn whence Servetus had the anatomical knowledge that enabled him as inductive reasoner-true forerunner here of our own immortal Harvey-to proclaim the pulmonary circulation,

The practice of dissecting the human subject had therefore, by this time, extended to France-the bodies of one or more malefactors being now publicly ana

1 Qua in re auxiliarios habui, primum Andreum Vesalium, juvenem Mehercule in Anatome diligentissimum; post hunc, Michael Villanovanus familiariter mihi in consectionibus adhibitus est, vir omni genere literarum ornatissimus, in Galeni doctrina vix ulli secundus. Horum duorum præsidio atque opera, tum artuum, tum aliarum partium exteriorum, musculos omnes, venas, arterias et nervos in ipsis corporibus examinavi studiosisque ostendi.' Io. Guinteri Institutionum Anatomicarum, Lib. iv., 4to. Basil, 1539.

tomised in the course of each winter session.1

Had we no other evidence of the genius with which Michael Servetus was endowed, beyond the use he made of what he saw in these anatomical demonstrations, we should still feel entitled to speak of him as the most far-sighted physiologist of his age; for he alone of all his contemporaries, though fettered by the prevalent metaphysical theories of life, the soul and the spirits, from which we ourselves have not yet escaped, not only divined, but positively proclaimed the passage of the blood, by way of the lungs, from the right to the left side of the heart, and thence-but stopping short of the whole truth, first proclaimed by Harvey-from the left ventricle of the heart to the body at large. But the book in which his important Induction is contained, though printed in his lifetime, was never published. Seen by none but a few theologians, who took no note of its physiological contents, it remained unknown to the world for nearly a century and a half, after its author had fallen a victim to the hate of Calvin and the intolerance of his age.

With the stimulus of necessity upon him, for he was poor, and the excitement of vanity, with which he was largely endowed, as he could not live on the learning he imbibed from his teachers, Servetus by-and-by

1 The reader who is curious on this matter will find what I believe to be the first representation of the anatomist engaged in dissecting the human body in the Fasciculus Medicine of Io. à Ketham, fol. Venet. 1495, of which there is a copy in fine preservation in the library of the Royal College of Surgeons.