(23) Epistle on China-root, 1546, p. 196.  Vesalius may be quoted
     in explanation—­in palliation: 

“All these impediments I made light of; for I was too young to seek gain by my art, and I was sustained by my eager desire to learn and to promote the studies in which I shared.  I say nothing of my diligence in anatomizing—­those who attended my lectures in Italy know how I spent three whole weeks over a single public dissection.  But consider that in one year I once taught in three different universities.  If I had put off the task of writing till this time; if I were now just beginning to digest my materials; students would not have had the use of my anatomical labours, which posterity may or may not judge superior to the rechauffes formerly in use, whether of Mesua, of Gatinaria, of some Stephanus or other on the differences, causes and symptoms of diseases, or, lastly, of a part of Servitor’s pharmacopoeia.  As to my notes, which had grown into a huge volume, they were all destroyed by me; and on the same day there similarly perished the whole of my paraphrase on the ten books of Rhazes to King Almansor, which had been composed by me with far more care than the one which is prefaced to the ninth book.  With these also went the books of some author or other on the formulae and preparation of medicines, to which I had added much matter of my own which I judged to be not without utility; and the same fate overtook all the books of Galen which I had used in learning anatomy, and which I had liberally disfigured in the usual fashion.  I was on the point of leaving Italy and going to Court; those physicians you know of had made to the Emperor and to the nobles a most unfavourable report of my books and of all that is published nowadays for the promotion of study; I therefore burnt all these works that I have mentioned, thinking at the same time that it would be an easy matter to abstain from writing for the future.  I must show that I have since repented more than once of my impatience, and regretted that I did not take the advice of the friends who were then with me.”

There is no such pathetic tragedy in the history of our profession.  Before the age of thirty Vesalius had effected a revolution in anatomy; he became the valued physician of the greatest court of Europe; but call no man happy till he is dead!  A mystery surrounds his last days.  The story is that he had obtained permission to perform a post-mortem examination on the body of a young Spanish nobleman, whom he had attended.  When the body was opened, the spectators to their horror saw the heart beating, and there were signs of life!  Accused, so it is said, by the Inquisition of murder and also of general impiety he only escaped through the intervention of the King, with the condition that he make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.  In carrying this out in 1564 he was wrecked on the island of Zante, where he died of a fever or of exhaustion, in the fiftieth year of his age.