What was the reason for this pilgrimage? Various alleged authorities have given different versions, many of which are evidently fictitious. The most reasonable account, which emanates from Spanish-French sources, dates from a letter written January 1, 1565, to the physician Caspar Peucer by Hubert Languer, or Hubertus Languetus, the Huguenot friend of Philip Sidney, which says:—“They say that Vesalius is dead. Doubtless you have heard that he went to Jerusalem. That journey had, as they tell us from Spain, an odd reason. Vesalius, believing a young Spanish nobleman whom he had attended to be dead, obtained leave of the parents to open the body for the sake of inquiring into the cause of the illness, which he had not rightly comprehended. This was granted; but he had no sooner made an incision into the body than he perceived the symptoms of life, and opening the breast, saw the heart beat. The parents coming afterwards to the knowledge of this, were not satisfied with prosecuting him for murder, but accused him to the Inquisition of impiety, in hopes that he would be punished with greater rigor by the judges of that tribunal than by those of the common law. But the King of Spain interposed, and saved him on condition that by way of atoning for the error he should undertake a pilgrimage to the Holy Land”. The pilgrimage was made, the Holy Sepulcher was visited, and the weary wanderer had started for Padua to take the chair which was made vacant by the death of Fallopius. A violent storm swept the Ionian Sea. Vesalius’s ship was wrecked upon the island of Zakynthos, where, on the fifteenth day of October, 1564, the Archiatrus died of exhaustion. Such was the miserable end of Andreas Vesalius of Brussels, a man, who, before he had attained his thirtieth year, had become the greatest anatomist that the world has ever seen. [Illustration: Ornamental block] FOOTNOTES [1]Théorie de la figure humaine. Paris, 1773. [2]Moehsen: Verzeichnis einer Sammlung von Bildnissen. Berlin, 1771; page 59. [3]Bell: Observations on Italy. Edinburgh, 1825; page 257. [4]Galen: De Anatomicis Adininistrationibus. Lib. II. [5]Celsus: De Medicina. Lib. I. [6]Fisher: Claudius Galenus. Annals of Anatomy and Surgery, Vol. IV., page 216. [7]Saint Basil, in his maturer years, deeply regretted that he had studied classical literature in his youth. Jerome regarded the reading of the writings of antiquity as a terrible crime. Gregory the Great declared a knowledge of grammar even for a layman to be indelicate.—Fort: Medical Economy during the Middle Ages. N. Y., 1883; pages 102, 103. [8]Meryon: History of Medicine. London, 1861; vol. I, page 479. [9]Adam; Vitae Germanorum Medicorum. Haidelbergae, 1620: page 224. [10]Zwinger: Theatrum Vitae Humanae. Basileae, 1571. [11]Vesalius: Fabrica, 1543, preface. [12]Sylvius: Ordo et Ordinis Ratio in Legendis Hippocratis et Galeni Libris, 1539.