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.
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