Predecessors of Vesalius.--Italy gave birth to the first anatomists who led a revolt against this slavery to authority in scientific matters. Of the eminent anatomists who preceded Vesalius it will be necessary to mention only three. Mundinus, or Mondino, professor at the University of Bologna, who, in the early part of the fourteenth century, dissected three bodies, published in 1315 a work founded upon human dissection. He was a man of originality whose work created a sensation in the medical world, but did not supersede Galen's. His influence, although exerted in the right direction, was not successful in establishing observation as the method of teaching anatomy. His book, however, was sometimes used as an introduction to Galen's writings or in conjunction with them. The next man who requires notice is Berengarius of Carpi, who was a professor in the University of Bologna in the early part of the sixteenth century. He is said to have dissected not less than one hundred human bodies; and although his opportunities for practical study were greater than those of Mondino, his attempts to place the science of anatomy upon a higher level were also unsuccessful. We pass now from Italy to France, where Sylvius (1478-1555), one of the teachers of Vesalius, made his mark. His name is preserved to-day in the _fissure of Sylvius_ in the brain, but he was not an original investigator, and he succeeded only in "making a reputation to which his researches do not entitle him." He was a selfish, avaricious man whose adoption of anatomy was not due to scientific interest, but to a love of gain. At the age of fifty he forsook the teaching of the classics for the money to be made by teaching anatomy. He was a blind admirer of Galen, and read his works to medical students without dissections, except that from time to time dogs were brought into the amphitheater and their structure exposed by unskilled barbers. Vesalius.--Vesalius now came upon the scene; and through his efforts, before he was thirty years of age, the idol of authority had been shattered, and, mainly through his persistence, the method of so great moment to future ages had been established. He was well fitted to do battle against tradition--strong in body, in mind, and in purpose, gifted and forceful; and, furthermore, his work was marked by concentration and by the high moral quality of fidelity to truth.