On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato, Vol. I

but they wished to discern with their own eyes, not those of others, both in mind and body, what was most true in every matter. And so it happened that in that age, the corrector of inveterate errors and a follower of free judgment in the investigation of science, they themselves also, though late, claimed their freedom and wished to be masters of their own right and judgment. And the beginning of this matter was made by others, and by Vesalius, who taught anatomy at Padua, in the books he published in Basel in 1543, written on the fabric of the human body. By this work, you can rightly say that the empire of Galen was shaken; for from that time, if not immediately, then certainly gradually, all who dealt with anatomy followed in the footsteps of Vesalius in such a way that they considered nothing as a foregone conclusion, but examined with the most exact judgment whatever Galen had taught about the human body. Having found many invented opinions in it, they began to reject his empire. The same happened in physiology, although only after nearly a hundred years, when William Harvey the Briton, in 1628, published a book entitled 'Anatomical Exercise on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals,' refuted the traditional opinions on the use of the heart, and was the first since human memory to teach the truth about the circulation of blood, 'learning and teaching anatomy not from books, but from dissections, not from the tenets of philosophers, but from the fabric of nature.' Although his new and unheard-of doctrine was attacked by manyCf. John Freind, cited work, p. 66; Haeser, cited work, § 422., yet by the power of truth and the weight of arguments, it briefly refuted the subtleties of the adversaries, but at the same time it completely overturned the authority and faith in Galen upon which his adversaries relied.

Thus, you may rightly say that Galen was driven from his kingdom in the year 1628, a kingdom he had held for so many centuries among peoples most diverse in region, customs, and culture; for from that time most especially, he began to be neglected and despised. Added to this is the fact that that age, in other disciplines as well, not in medicine alone, especially in those that look to the investigation of nature, deserted the ancients, both Greeks and Romans, who had once been the sole leaders and authors, as more things were discovered and