the lists as the champion of Galen, Vesalius took up the challenge, left the work upon which he was then engaged, and began a tour of visits to the universities of Padua, Bologna and Pisa, for the express purpose of disproving, by the aid of numerous dissections, the statements made by his antagonists. Throughout this tour he was received everywhere with enthusiasm, the older men among the teachers of anatomy vying with the younger in manifesting the strength of their approval. The entire journey, says Haeser, was from beginning to end a series of the most brilliant triumphs. But, notwithstanding this vindication, which most men would have accepted with the greatest satisfaction, Vesalius returned to his home in Brussels only to find that the bitter attacks made by his enemies had not ceased. This depressed him greatly, for he was not philosophical enough to recognize the facts that jealousy was at the bottom of this ill feeling toward him, and also that sufficient time had not yet elapsed for the news of his triumphant vindication to travel from Italy to Belgium. While suffering from this fit of the blues he committed to the flames all his books and manuscripts. These latter, it appears, contained not only the fruits of many years of laborious anatomical and physiological research, but also a large number of memoranda relating to pathological anatomy.
In 1556, complaints having reached the ears of Charles the Fifth to the effect that the sin of dissecting human corpses was greatly on the increase, this monarch decided to refer the question to the Theological Faculty of the University of Salamanca, in the northwestern part of Spain, for an authoritative opinion. The reply which these broad-minded theologians sent to the Emperor was most satisfactory. It is reported to have been expressed in the following words: "The dissection of human cadavers serves a useful purpose and is therefore permissible to Christians of the Catholic Church." This decision did not of course put an immediate end to the harsh criticisms and petty persecutions of the bigots; but, as the years went by, it was noted that the work of scientific research in human
