Vesalius had no idea of a general circulation.  Though he had escaped from the domination of the great Pergamenian in anatomy, he was still his follower in physiology.  The two figures annexed, taken from one of the two existing copies of the “Tabulae Anatomica,” are unique in anatomical illustration, and are of special value as illustrating the notion of the vascular system that prevailed until Harvey’s day.  I have already called your attention to Galen’s view of the two separate systems, one containing the coarse, venous blood for the general nutrition of the body, the other the arterial, full of a thinner, warmer blood with which were distributed the vital spirits and the vital heat.  The veins had their origin in the liver; the superior vena cava communicated with the right heart, and, as Galen taught, some blood was distributed to the lungs; but the two systems were closed, though Galen believed there was a communication at the periphery between the arteries and veins.  Vesalius accepted Galen’s view that there is some communication between the venous and arterial systems through pores in the septum of the ventricles, though he had his doubts, and in the second edition of his book (1555) says that inspite of the authority of the Prince of Physicians he cannot see how the smallest quantity of blood could be transmitted through so dense a muscular septum.  Two years before this (1553),(*) his old fellow student, Michael Servetus, had in his “Christianismi Restitutio” annatomical touch with one another!

     (*) See the Servetus Notes in the Osler Anniversary Volumes, New
     York, 1919, Vol.  II.—­Ed.

The publication 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.