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81 [139] PARÉ
COLOMBO [140] versity of Louvain and practiced medi cine there. His interest was in geography, how ever, and his importance to science rests on an observation he made concerning longitude. The latitude of a particular spot on earth is easily measured by the height of the noonday sun. The longi tude is another matter altogether; no measurement of any object in the sky will suffice. Gemma Frisius pointed out in 1533 that if one had an accurate way of keep ing time, it would then be possible to de termine longitude. He was perfectly cor rect; but considering that no accurate timepiece existed or could, at the time, even be conceived as existing, the sug gestion has a certain imaginatively science-fictionish air about it. Nevertheless, the time was to come when Harrison [259] was to convert Gemma Frisius’ suggestion into reality two centuries later. [139] PARÉ, Ambroise (pa-rayO French surgeon
Mayenne, 1510 Died: Paris, December 20, 1590 Pare belonged to an era in which phy sicians removed themselves from sur gery, considering it to be fit for manual laborers but not for professional men of intellect. In those days, and for two cen turies later, surgery was merely one of the specializations of the barbering pro fession; the flesh was cut as well as the hair. And, indeed, Paré was only a bar ber’s apprentice when he came to Paris as a boy in 1519. He attained the rank of master barber-surgeon in 1536. Paré attached himself to the army as barber-surgeon, a post for which he qual ified in 1541, and his fame grew rap idly. He rose to higher and higher posts until he was surgeon to a series of four kings, Henry II and his three sons, who ruled successively as Francis II, Charles IX, and Henry III. There is a story, pos sibly a fable, that he turned Protestant and that he was saved during the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre only be cause Charles IX needed his services and hid him in his own bedchamber. Paré’s fame was securely founded, for he introduced several important changes in the surgery of the day that could not help but make him popular with any man who felt he might someday be a candi date for surgery. Most surgeons of the time practiced searing heavily. They dis infected gunshot wounds with boiling oil and stopped bleeding by cauterizing the arteries (without anesthetics). Paré fol lowed Hippocrates’ [22] principle of in terfering as little as possible with nature. He practiced cleanliness and he used soothing ointments for gunshot wounds. (One story is that once, in camp, he ran out of boiling oil and quickly discovered he was better off without it—to say nothing of the poor wounded soldiers.) He also tied off arteries to stop bleeding. With an infinitesimal fraction of the pain he brought off far more cures. It is no wonder that he is often considered the father of modern surgery. He wrote a report of his findings in this area in 1545. His lack of education forced him to write it in French rather than Latin. For this, he was scorned by the learned ignoramuses of the day. He also wrote French summaries of the works of Vesalius [146], so that barber-surgeons might learn something of the structure of the human body be fore hacking away. He devised clever artificial limbs and improved obstetrical methods. [140] COLOMBO, Realdo (koh-lohm' boh) Italian anatomist Born: Cremona, about 1510 Died: Rome, 1559 Colombo, the son of an apothecary, was educated at Milan and was himself an apothecary until he was apprenticed to a leading Venetian surgeon. He went on to study medicine at Padua and ob tained his degree in 1541. He was appointed professor of anat omy at Padua, replacing Vesalius [146], then went on to teach at Pisa. Although friendly to Vesalius at first, Colombo
[141] EUSTACHIO SERVETUS [142]
found he could not make the break with ancient anatomy that Vesalius’ teach ings required and he became a violent critic of the new anatomy. He went to Rome in 1548 in an effort to enlist Michelangelo as illustrator for a book that would surpass Vesalius’. But Mi chelangelo was in his seventies and could not take on the task. (Pity!). Nevertheless, Colombo was not merely a spoiler. He departed from Galen [65] himself by clearly showing in 1559 that blood leaves the heart on its way to the lungs by means of the pulmonary artery and returns by the pulmonary vein, with out ever passing through the wall sepa rating the two ventricles (as Galen claimed). He had thus demonstrated the pulmonary circulation of the blood though he stopped short of grasping the general circulation. That was left for Harvey [174] seven decades later, but Colombo was an important forerunner as Harvey himself recognized. Colombo remained in Rome the rest of his life, serving as papal surgeon. [141] EUSTACHIO, Bartolemeo (ay- oo-stah'kee-oh) Italian anatomist
gust 27, 1574 Eustachio, the son of a physician, and a physician himself from 1540, was an adversary of Vesalius [146] and an upholder of Galen [65], yet his ana tomical studies paralleled those of the former and not those of the latter. Eu- stachio’s work was completed in 1552 but was not published until rediscovered in 1714. For this reason he scarcely influenced his contemporaries. His illustrations were in some respects even more accurate than those of Ve salius, but they were stiff and clumsy and unworthy, as far as sheer beauty is con cerned, to be mentioned in the same breath. Eustachio’s most successful work was done on the sympathetic nervous system, the kidney, and the ear. His name has been given to the Eustachian tube, a narrow canal connecting the ear and throat, although this had been dis covered by Alcmaeon [11] two thousand years before. He was also the first to describe the adrenal glands and he pio neered in the study of the detailed struc ture of the teeth. In 1562 he was appointed professor of medicine in the Collegio della Sapienza in Rome, a post he held till his death. [142] SERVETUS, Michael (sur'vee'- tus) Spanish physician Born: Villanueva de Sixena, Sep tember 29, 1511 Died: Geneva, Switzerland, Octo ber 27, 1553 Servetus, the son of a notary, was in tended for the law, but his interests were much wider. He lectured on astrology (in which he firmly believed) and de fended the botanical views of his friend Fuchs [136], These, however, were the days of the Protestant Reformation and all Europe was convulsed with theological discus sions. Servetus developed radical notions that would today be described as Unitar ian. He advanced them tactlessly, anger ing both the Catholics and the Protes tants. He went to Paris in 1536 and studied medicine there, meeting his even tual nemesis, John Calvin, one of the most noted and powerful of the early Protestants. Servetus quarreled with the physicians in Paris, went elsewhere, and finally settled down to practice in Vienne, in southeast France. In 1553 Servetus published his theological views anonymously and some years previously he had sent a manuscript version to Calvin, with whom he was carrying on a correspondence. Calvin, however, quickly broke off the correspondence on reading those views. He was not one to appreciate—or forget—Servetus’ views. In the book, Servetus also described the circulation of that part of the blood that went through the lungs. The blood, he held, traveled out of the heart through the pulmonary artery and back through the pulmonary vein; it did not go through the heart muscle itself. This 83 [143] REINHOLD
MERCATOR [144]
was a good start at breaking with Galen, though it got nowhere until Harvey [174] generalized the matter for all the body, three quarters of a century later. Servetus’ physiological heresy was dis regarded, but his theological heresy was not. His authorship was discovered, he was arrested and escaped, making for Italy. Foolishly he went by way of nearby Geneva, then under control of the dark and bitter Calvin. Servetus was not a subject or resident of Geneva and had committed no crime in Geneva for - which he could be held. Nevertheless, Calvin insisted on having him con demned to death (a deed that has black ened Calvin’s name in the eyes of poster ity) and Servetus was burned at the stake, crying out his Unitarian views to the last. [143] REINHOLD, Erasmus (rine'- hold)
German mathematician Born: Saalfeld, Thuringia, Octo ber 22, 1511 Died: Saalfeld, February 19, 1553 Reinhold studied at the University of Wittenberg and was appointed professor of mathematics there in 1536. Although the University was the very center of Lutheran doctrine, and although Lu theranism was profoundly anti-Copemi- can at the start, Reinhold was neverthe less one of the first converts to the new astronomical theory even before Coper nicus’ [127] book was published for he had studied it in manuscript. Reinhold made the practical contri bution of calculating the first set of plan etary tables based on Copernican theory, and, for the purpose, he went over Co pernicus’ calculations from stem to stem, correcting where necessary. The tables were subsidized by Albert, Duke of Prussia, and were therefore called Tabulae Prutenicae (Prussian Tables). Published in 1551, they were rather better than the Alfonsine Tables, and their mere existence was a strong ar gument in favor of Copernicus. They were not, however, quite as good as the partiality of the author led him to claim they were, and in three quarters of a century they were to be superseded by the better tables published by Kepler [169]. Reinhold’s acceptance of the Coper nican theory was not wholehearted. He recognized it as a mathematical device for preparing planetary tables more ac curately but did not consider it a repre sentation of reality. [144] MERCATOR, Gerardus (mer- kay'ter) Flemish geographer Bom: Rupelmonde (in what is now Belgium), March 5, 1512 Died: Duisburg, Germany, De cember 2, 1594 Mercator’s real name was Gerhard Kremer, but he shared in the sixteenth- century predilection for Latinized pen names, and adapted the Latin version (meaning “merchant”) when he entered the University of Louvain in 1530, emerging with a master’s degree in 1532. Young Mercator’s interest in geogra phy was dictated by both time and place. The great voyages of the Age of Explo ration filled the air in his youth, and the ships of the Netherlands were not back ward in the exploration of distant is lands. Good maps were necessary if nav igation was to be more than hit or miss (with lives very likely sacrificed if it was miss). In 1534, therefore, Mercator, who had studied under Gemma Frisius [138], founded a geographical establishment at Louvain, from whose university he had graduated four years earlier, and began the preparation of a long series of maps, making use of instruments designed by himself and bringing to his task more than a bit of mathematical knowledge. He also prepared a set of such instru ments for Emperor Charles V. The religious unrest of the time placed Mercator, a Protestant in a Catholic re gion, in some danger. In 1544 he was prosecuted for heresy and although he got off with a whole skin, he eventually decided to play it safe and emigrated to Protestant Germany in 1552. In 1559 he
[144] MERCATOR
RHETICUS [145] was appointed cartographer to the Duke of Cleves. At first he remained under the domi nation of Ptolemy [64], whose redis covery in the late Middle Ages had had a cramping effect on cartography. So revered was the old Greek that maps built on observation, and therefore show ing the Mediterranean Sea at its correct length, were deliberately altered into error in order to make them match Ptol emy’s version, which had the Mediter ranean several hundred miles too long. Gradually Mercator adjusted Ptolemy to the facts and then, in 1568, he made his great advance. It had always been a problem to depict a spherical surface on a flat piece of paper. In ancient days the area of immediate geographical interest formed so small a portion of the globe that it could be presented as flat without serious trouble to the coast-hugging mar iners. By the sixteenth century, however, the whole world had to be depicted and the change from sphere to plane meant inevitable distortion. The problem was to obtain the least damaging distortion for mariners sailing thousands of miles across the open ocean. It occurred to Mercator to make use of a “cylindrical projection.” Imagine a hollow cylinder encircling the earth and touching it at the equator. A light at the earth’s center can then be imagined as casting the shadow of the surface fea tures on the cylinder, and the cylinder when unwrapped carries a map of the world by “Mercator projection.” In this map the meridians of longitude are vertical and parallel. Since on the sphere the meridians of longitude ap proach each other and meet at the poles, this means that east-west distances are increasingly exaggerated as one travels north and south from the equator. The parallels of latitude run horizontal and parallel. As one goes north and south from the equator, they spread out more widely.
On such a map Greenland and Ant arctica are enormously enlarged and nei ther the North Pole nor the South Pole can be shown. Nevertheless, it was a par ticularly useful map for navigators (who generally avoided both Arctic and Ant arctic) because a ship traveling in a con stant compass direction followed a route that appeared as a straight line on the Mercator projection, but a curved line on all other projections. The world map most familiar to us even today is drawn according to the Mercator projection. The last few years of Mercator’s life were devoted to preparing a detailed series of maps of various portions of Europe. It was not published till the year after his death. Because the cover of the book of these maps showed a picture of the Greek Titan, Atlas, holding th'e world on his shoulders, the book (and all future books of maps) was called an atlas.
With Mercator the influence of Greek geography comes to an end, and the era of modem geography begins. [145] RHETICUS (ray'tih-koos) German mathematician
ary 16, 1514 Died: Cassovia, Hungary, now Kosice, Czechoslovakia, Decem ber 4, 1574 The real name of Rheticus was Georg Joachim von Lauchen, but he named himself after the ancient name (Rhaetia) of the province in which he was bom. (His father had been a physician who was beheaded for sorcery when Rheticus was fourteen so that may have made the change of name advisable.) Rheticus studied at Zürich, where Gesner [147] was a schoolmate and where he met Paracelsus [131]. He went on to Wittenberg and obtained his master’s degree in 1536; then began to teach mathematics there. He was a rea sonably important mathematician, being the first to relate the trigonometric func tions to angles rather than to the arcs of circles and preparing the best trig onometric tables up to his time. He is best known, however, as Coper nicus’ [127] first disciple. In 1539 he traveled to Frombork to study Coper nicus’ manuscript, and received an in tense ten-week course in the new view.
[146] VESALIUS
VESALIUS [146] He published a summary of its contents in 1540, but was careful not to mention Copernicus by name. He then persuaded the older man to publish his great book. He wrote a biography of Copernicus but that, unfortunately, is lost. He also drew the first map of East Prussia and that too is lost. [146] VESALIUS, Andreas (veh-say'- lee-us) Flemish anatomist Born: Brussels, December 31, 1514
Died: Zante (now Zakinthos), west of Greece, October 15, 1564 Vesalius’ mother was English and his father was court pharmacist to Emperor Charles V. He came, in fact, of a long line of physicians who originally dwelt in Wesel—hence his surname. He studied medicine at Louvain (in what is now Belgium) and in Paris, both very conser vative centers saturated with the teach ings of Galen [65], He quarreled bitterly with his teacher in Paris, but learned his Galen thoroughly, wrote a graduation dissertation on Rhazes [82], and, as late as 1538, was publishing material largely Galenian in nature. He was always eager to dissect for himself but found this difficult to arrange in northern Europe where he served for a while as a military surgeon. He there fore traveled to Italy, where in the light of the late Renaissance there was more intellectual freedom than in other parts of Europe. Dissection was improper, to be sure, but the authorities were readier to look the other way and men such as Mondino de’ Luzzi [110] had made it al most respectable two and a half cen turies earlier. He obtained his medical degree at Padua in 1537. In Italy, Vesalius taught anatomy at the universities of Pavia, Bologna, and Pisa. Disgusted with slipshod, hacking dissections by assistants, he reintroduced Mondino’s important but forgotten habit of conducting anatomical demonstrations in person. He became a popular lecturer, and students, of whom the most impor tant was Fallopius [149], flocked to him. He managed to make a sensation with something as simple as a demonstration that men and women have equal num bers of ribs. (Because of the story in Genesis that Eve had been created out of Adam’s rib, it was widely believed during the Middle Ages that men had one rib fewer than women.) He put together the result of his re searches in one of the great books of scientific history, De Corporis Humani Fabrica (“On the Structure of the Human Body”). This was the first accu rate book on human anatomy; its great advantage over the ancient books was that it had illustrations which, being printed, could be reproduced exactly in any number of copies. (Before the time of printing, even where words were cop ied accurately, illustrations degenerated of necessity.) This alone allowed print ing to revolutionize biology. Illustrations in themselves would have been enough, but those in Vesalius’ books were outstanding in beauty. Jan Stephen van Calcar, a pupil of the artist Titian, did many of them, and it was chiefly in the illustrations that Vesalius was superior to his rival, Eustachio [141]. The human body was shown in natural positions and the illustrations of the muscles in particular are so exact that nothing since has surpassed them. The book, an astonishing achievement for a man not yet thirty, met with fierce oppo sition from such anatomists as Colombo [140], but it was the end of Galen. Vesalius’ work was not a false dawn, as Mondino’s had been. It marked at one stroke the beginning of modern anatomy. By an interesting coincidence it was pub lished in the same year as Copernicus’ [127] book, a simultaneous end and be ginning in the biological and physical sciences. Together, they were the birth of the Scientific Revolution. Though he was accurate as an anato mist, Vesalius clung to some of the old ideas in physiology. (Whereas anatomy deals with the structure of the living or ganism. physiology deals with its func tioning.) Vesalius accepted Galen’s views on the circulation of the blood and believed that blood must pass from one 8 6
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