The End of My Liffvb

It seems to me my time on this miraculous planet is coming to an end. Just moments before, my ship had fallen victim to the Ionian Sea, leaving survivors weak upon the island of Zakynthos. I am ill beyond imagine and currently unable to pay for my funeral to come… Will I be left for the animals? Or perhaps some human would save my remains… I don’t have a clue. This shall be my last post on my blog before I perish…

The Island of Zakynthos

Before we had crashed, I was sailing in the Venetian Fleet with James Malatesta. I had taken this voyage due to pressure from the Inquisition. Those fiends. None of them had given me a chance to explicate my situation… What had happened was completely unimaginable. I had been performing an autopsy on a “dead” Spanish Aristocrat and when I had cut in before the heart, I found it beating. Was he drugged? I shall not ever know. Immediately I was deemed a murderer by his family and brought before the Inquisition. Only my link to Phillip II helped me survive their ways of torture and condemnation. The generous Phillip II was able to reduce my sentence to a mere Pilgrimage. Of course, these events would probably never be properly recorded to prove it's accuracy...

Yet here I am now, lying here prepared to die, with recent news during my time in Jerusalem that my friend Gabriel Fallopius had died recently at the University of Padua. I had planned to take his position, but such an event would never occur. I will not be able to travel back to the main lands of Europe. I hope my family fares well without me; God knows where they are… I am 50 years old and a proud physician, surgeon, and anatomist and today is October 15, 1564. The end is nearing, I end my post here. 

Dissection Tools

Dissection Instruments:
I had often used instruments such as the ones shown above in order to perform a dissection or an autopsy

Court Times with the Royals

These past years I had been working in a new occupation as the imperial psychiatric court physician of Emperor Charles V, and later of his son, Phillip II. Yeah. That's a long title. To take this job I had rejected an offer from Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, another position with a title worth having, but I decided to turn it down. The office offered by the emperor was just that much more appealing. Weeks into the job I found myself being ridiculed by the other physicians. They thought of me as an inferior barber-surgeon, one who cuts hair and, for part time, performs surgery as well. Each had put themselves above me with their statuses as physicians. How could they continue though? After all, my researches were more radical and effective than that of theirs. In the time as physician for the emperor I successfully established a position where at the top of the most wanted physicians. I was also able to write several letters which, with the help of my brother Franciscus, was published as the Letters on the China Root with evidence of its efficiency by 1546. (P.S. A year before the publication I had gotten married to Anne Van Hamme! Nearing the time of the publication was the birth of our new baby daughter whom we also named Anne. Yes. Feel the creativity.)

Smilax Chinae

During the time studying the China root, I found its properties extraordinary. Which other plant could suck syphilis right out of your system? Its original name was the Smilax Chinae, an oriental root. Unfortunately the recent distributions of this superior drug have brought it to become a commonly misused drug among the young. My further studies had allowed me to find the exact perpetrators of this drug in as much as a glimpse. Ahh… The unfortunate misuse... Perhaps these unfortunates have fallen into the wrong circles in life… Might I remind a few of the young’uns reading this to live life effectively, les’t you wish to find yourself on my dissection table :].

Continuing from this, I had served time already as a surgeon and physician in the mending of wounds during the travels of the courts with Charles V. Injuries from tournaments and other events were brought to my attention and I had several chances to perform postmortems. Now I serve under his son, Philip II, who has generously given me annuity for life. Who knows what shall go on next? Phillip seems to advocate Catholicism to the largest reaches…

More Pages of my Work

Preview of the times and my book "De Humani Corporis Fabrica"

My Research vs. Galen's Research on Apes

Galen himself

         So many errors..... All by the famous Galen whom even the church had come to support. According to Galen, men had one less rib bone than that of a woman, supporting the theory that women were created from a single rib bone of Adam himself. Such a challenge put before me, it seemed impossible. I told a friend once," They merely chop up the things which are to be shown on the instructions of the physician, who, having never put his hand to cutting, simply steers the boat from the commentary—and not without arrogance. And thus all things are taught wrongly, and days go by in silly disputations." It was by this which drove me to publish the "humani corpus fabrica". The information which Galen had presented in the 1300s was insufficient for they were all anatomical structures of Barbary apes. My intolerant colleagues had decided to attempt to shoot down my research, telling me human structures would have changed over such a course of time, addressing the differences of the anatomy of my examples and Galen's drawings. There are multitudes of severe implications indicating the differences in our studies such as the differences in the jaws of us and of the Barbary apes he had chosen to dissect. His laws had limited him to those of animals, his ambition to discover was naught compared to that of mine. Galen had made his mistake in trying to pass an ape as a human; he took the liberty to modify his recordings to fit his likings. He had a theory of how the blood reaches the higher organs which theorized the holes connecting ventricles... too bad I could never find them. I refuse however to take my argument further than that, for all I need to prove his mistakes are in my books.

Success of "De Humani Corporis Fabrica"

Page from "De Humani Corporis Fabrica"

Ah the success around these years has induced feelings within my cranium that my emotions cannot be expressed properly in this post. Immediately after publishing my research as the 7 Volume, 663 page book including three hundred anatomical drawings by the painter Jan Stefan called “De Humani Corporis Fabrica", pirated versions of my volume immediately appeared... Just as I had expected … In these few successful years I've published numerous things including the Tabulae sex, The Venesection letter, and a revision of Galen’s work called The Opera Galeni. I have heard several rumors indicating that my books have set some basis for medical textbooks to come…

Earlier during the year I had done a public dissection with the surgeon Franz Jeckelmann where we had masterfully constructed a skeleton of a human. This skeleton would help me completely prove my previous arguments against the studies of Galen which I had made 2 years ago in 1541. Not only would it accomplish that, but it would help me in the research for my book. For the lucky victim of the dissection, we used the corpse of Jakob Karrer von Gebweiler (a supposedly famous felon from Switzerland) who had been beheaded on May 12, 1543. His skeletal system was reconstructed and preserved in a fashion described in my book, “De Humani Corporis Fabrica". We later donated the skeleton to the University of Basle where they have seemingly placed it safely for use in years to come. To prepare the bones of this structure, I had placed these bones in a pot and boiled it in hot water until the flesh could easily be removed. Various other parts I had taken my time simply scrape off the excess tissue on the bones.

These methods and recent success put together has allowed me to consider taking a new job a bit more honorable than the one as of now, to be the Imperial Physician of Emperor Charles V.