The Popes and Science: The History of the Papal Relations to Science During the Middle Ages and Down to Our Own TimeWalsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Religion
The Popes and Science: The History of the Papal Relations to Science During the Middle Ages and Down to Our Own Time
Walsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Popes; Religion and science -- History; Science -- History
Under Sixtus V., who was Pope from 1585 to 1590, the distinguished
writer on medicine, and especially on anatomy, Piccolomini, published
his lectures on anatomy with a dedication to that Pope. It is well
known that the relations between the professor of anatomy at the Papal
Medical School and the Pope were very friendly. As was the case with
regard to Colombo or Columbus, so also with Caesalpinus. Columbus was
the first to describe the pulmonary circulation. Caesalpinus is
generally claimed by the Italians to have made the discovery of the
circulation of the blood throughout the body before Harvey. Columbus
had been at Pisa and was tempted to come to Rome. Caesalpinus had also
been at Pisa until Clement VIII. held out inducements that brought him
to Rome. Clement is the last Pope of the century, but Von Töply
mentions five Popes in the next century who were in intimate relations
with {115} distinguished investigators into medical subjects and whose
names are in some way connected with some of the most noteworthy
teaching and writing in medical matters during the seventeenth
century.
It will be readily seen what a caricature of the life of Vesalius is
Prof. White's paragraph, if one compares it with the following
paragraph taken from so readily available an historical source as the
article on the History of Anatomy, by Prof. Turner, of Edinburgh, in
the first volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The distinguished
Scotch anatomist who so worthily filled the chair of anatomy at the
University of Edinburgh says with regard to Berengar of Carpi, who was
the professor of anatomy at Bologna thirty-five years before
Vesalius's time, that, "In the annals of medicine Berengar's name will
be remembered as one of the most zealous and eminent in cultivating
the anatomy of the human body. It was long before the anatomists of
the following age could boast of equalling him. His assiduity was
indefatigable, and he declares that he dissected above one hundred
human bodies." This should be enough, it seems to me, to settle the
question that anatomy was permitted very freely before Vesalius's
time. Professor Turner's authority in such a matter is above all
suspicion. He knew the history of anatomy.
If more evidence be needed, compare with President White's fantastic
sketch of Vesalius the following sketch of his great contemporary,
Columbus or Colombo, to whose anatomical investigations we owe the
discovery of the pulmonary circulation:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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