Into this book, however, Vesalius introduced—­as Bishop Berkeley did not—­much, and perhaps too much, about himself; and much, though perhaps not too much, about poor old Galen, and his substitution of an ape’s inside for that of a human being.  The storm which had been long gathering burst upon him.  The old school, trembling for their time-honoured reign, bespattered, with all that pedantry, ignorance, and envy could suggest, the man who dared not only to revolutionise surgery, but to interfere with the privileged mysteries of medicine; and, over and above, to become a favourite at the court of the greatest of monarchs.  While such as Eustachius, himself an able discoverer, could join in the cry, it is no wonder if a lower soul, like that of Sylvius, led it open-mouthed.  He was a mean, covetous, bad man, as George Buchanan well knew; and, according to his nature, he wrote a furious book, ’Ad Vesani calumnias depulsandas.’  The punning change of Vesalius into Vesanus (madman) was but a fair and gentle stroke for a polemic, in days in which those who could not kill their enemies with steel or powder, held themselves justified in doing so, if possible, by vituperation, culumny, and every engine of moral torture.  But a far more terrible weapon, and one which made Vesalius rage, and it may be for once in his life tremble, was the charge of impiety and heresy.  The Inquisition was a very ugly place.  It was very easy to get into it, especially for a Netherlander:  but not so easy to get out.  Indeed Vesalius must have trembled, when he saw his master, Charles V., himself take fright, and actually call on the theologians of Salamanca to decide whether it was lawful to dissect a human body.  The monks, to their honour, used their common sense, and answered Yes.  The deed was so plainly useful, that it must be lawful likewise.  But Vesalius did not feel that he had triumphed.  He dreaded, possibly, lest the storm should only have blown over for a time.  He fell, possibly, into hasty disgust at the folly of mankind, and despair of arousing them to use their common sense, and acknowledge their true interest and their true benefactors.  At all events, he threw into the fire—­so it is said—­all his unpublished manuscripts, the records of long years of observation, and renounced science thenceforth.

We hear of him after this at Brussels, and at Basle likewise—­in which latter city, in the company of physicians, naturalists, and Grecians, he must have breathed awhile a freer air.  But he seems to have returned thence to his old master Charles V., and to have finally settled at Madrid as a court surgeon to Philip II., who sent him, but too late, to extract the lance splinters from the eye of the dying Henry II.

He was now married to a lady of rank from Brussels, Anne van Hamme by name; and their daughter married in time Philip II.’s grand falconer, who was doubtless a personage of no small social rank.  He was well off in worldly things; somewhat fond, it is said, of good living and of luxury; inclined, it may be, to say, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,” and to sink more and more into the mere worldling, unless some shock awoke him from his lethargy.