Vesalius at the University of Paris

NIVERSITIES are hostile to Genius," said ' Emerson. He might have cited the University SI of Paris and Vesalius as a case in point. For here was a genius who had articled with destiny to dedicate himself, his gifts, his splendid impatience to Reform; and here a University so encrusted and anklyosed with Conservatism that there was nothing quite like it in Europe at the time. What was Vesalius doing in that high, hushed Temple of Authority, that Depot of Bigotry, where studies in the schools had subserved the Faith for twelve generations and more? Did he hope at 19, by some open process, to supple the hard unintelligence that reigned in those schools, "so great, so rich, so rigid" (as Rabelais describes them), where, if a scholar dares pronounce quwisquis or quialis in other than the medieval manner he is like to be stripped of his dignities? Vesalius went down to Paris to matriculate in Medicine in 1533, according to Cuneus; he continued to work there for the next three years, mainly under Jacobus Sylvius and Guenther von Andernach. He had fulfilled the requirements for the Doctoral Degree; within the half-year he would receive from Paris the bonnet and dignity of Doctor Medicinae. But war between France and the Empire again threatened. Vesalius, bound by every tie to the side of Clharles V, left Paris at once for Louvain, his only title, "Candidatus medicinae." But how he had earned his Candidacy! He had shown address in outsmarting authority in Paris, in avoiding brushes with bigotry, in attacking that type of Galenism upheld by the master of Trinquet, that enraged and mighty man, Sylvius of Amiens, Galen's redoubt-able Vicar on Earth. He had raised angry and dangerous questions and threshed them out in a series of disputes-in which all the arts and entrenchments of eloquence and book-learning were on the side of Sylvius, and all the facts on the side of Vesalius. Advised by his mentor Cardenas, Vesalius had chosen Sylvius as preceptor, because Sylvius was a peerless organizer of medical studies with a "certam methodum docendi," a mathematical mind, with a Gallic sense of form, and a flair for nomenclature. The course covered three years. In the first year came generalities, internal medicine on the basis of twelve treatises of Galen, one of Hippocrates, the third book of Paulus, and Gatinaria on fevers, with