said by some to possess special ganglionic coils of its own as stores and strengtheners of nervous action. At such length have I deemed it requisite to speak of Galen, the ruler of men's mind on all matters connected with medical science for thirteen centuries and more; his authority at once a despotism and a religion, which it would have been treason to question and impiety to gainsay; his works, with those of Aristotle, the text on which the intelligence of Europe expended itself in criticism and comment during all these ages. But his rule, in any repressive sense, came to an end at last, and mainly through the influence of two men, united in their student lives, as in their misfortunes and early deaths, of whom, after a few words on their teachers, we shall have to speak particularly-Andrea Vesalius and Michael Servetus.1 ' Could I find any ground in his work De Natura Hominis for the credit Nemesius, Bishop of Emessa, has had given him of having had an idea more or less complete of the circulation of the blood, this would be the place in my survey in which I should have to criticize him. But I am spared the pains, for, though I have looked somewhat particularly into his book, I find nothing that is not better and more fully set forth by his authority, Galen, whom he follows with little divergence in all he has to say on the liver, the heart, and the blood. CHAPTER I. MUNDINUS-BERENGARIUS CARPUS. THE work that served the modern world as Text-book on the subject of Anatomy, for something like two centuries, was that of Mundinus, or Mondini. This Anatomist, so celebrated during the whole period of the Renaissance, flourished in the earlier part of the fourteenth century, and died at Bologna, in the university of which he was one of the medical professors, so long ago as the year 1318. He is said to have composed his work on Anatomy only three years before his death. It immediately arrested public attention, and was in fact the first work after the writings of Galen that led the medical world to think of Anatomy as a somewhat important guide in the interpretation and treatment of disease. The Anatomy of Mundinus, transcribed, of course, times out of number, existed, in manuscript only to the year 1478, when it was printed in folio form at Pavia. This edition, I presume, is extremely rare, and I have not been able to meet with it. But there is one forming part of the Fasciculus Medicinæ of Joannes â Ketham (1494); and another edited by Jac. Berengarius of |