of the whole body, and demonstrated them to all the students.' In 1538, Servetus graduated with the highest honors. He became a lecturer at the university on the medical sciences and mathematics, and his wide and varied culture attracted distinguished visitors, including the Archbishop of Vienne, whose confidential physician Servetus became.

A life of peace, and much glory and money would have been his, had he been able to keep his critical faculty in abeyance. But this was the one thing Michael Servetus could not do. He published a learned medical work, Syruporum Universa Ratio, in which from a therapeutic and physiological standpoint he criticized the great Galen, whose pre-eminent authority as an anatomist was after an elapse of fourteen centuries at last to be undermined by the publication of Vesalius' monumental De Humani Corporis Fabrica, while his knowledge of obstetrics was attacked by the famous midwife, Louise Bourgeois, who claimed that the unmarried master never knew the pregnant uterus of a woman. It was not only Galenism, but the Arabian system which was then much in vogue, that Servetus sought to displace.

His book was a distinct advance in the art of prescribing. For the nauseous mixtures the mere names of which now act as emetics he introduced more palatable drugs; in these pages we see the first rational attempt to avoid incompatibilities, and we find also the first suggestion of what the pharmacist calls vehicles, that is, pleasant-smelling and sweet-tasting ingredients of no use in themselves, but valuable as carrying other drugs of therapeutic action.

In those days people took books seriously, and Syruporum Universa Ratio aroused intense antagonism. The Faculty of Paris attempted to impeach Servetus. Dissensions divided the university, riots occurred in the streets, and some of the students were severely injured. Who to-day would get excited over a treatise on sweetened syrups?

It must be admitted that Servetus was not averse to argumentation. He had a ready tongue and a facile pen and

he liked to use both. There must have been a sort of childlike vanity about him, for he sent Calvin one of his manuscripts and asked him what he thought of it.

A stranger rode into Louyset, and the next day wandered into Geneva, where he earnestly asked for a boat to take him toward Zurich on his way to Naples. He had escaped from

prison, and like Baumgarten in Schiller's Wilhelm Tell, might have exclaimed:

Then must I fall into the tyrant's hands,

And with the port of safety close in sight!
Yonder it lies-I reach it with mine eyes,
My very voice can echo to its shores;

There is the boat to carry me across;

Yet here despairing, helpless must I lie!

Unhappier was his fate, for instead of the helping hand of the Swiss hero to row him thru the storm in safety, the despotic voice of Calvin, like a second Gessler, was heard commanding his immediate arrest. Servetus was again imprisoned, and the Christian Hercules (as Beza called Calvin) labored for a death-sentence.

The trial lasted from August till October, and several passages deemed heretical were read from Servetus' latest book, which had recently been published-Christianismi Restitutio. Calvin, tirelessly malignant, was the chief prosecutor. There was no escape from the implacable Genevan. Servetus had defeated him once - it was now Calvin's turn. He had the infidel on the hip and he smote him hard. Yet even without Calvin, Servetus' life was in danger, for during the month of June he had been burnt in effigy at Vienne, and in July the Roman Catholic Inquisition condemned him to death. But as Calvin was anxious for the honor of burning a heretic, he would not relinquish Michael Servetus, and on October 26, 1553, his tribunal read the following judgment:

Against Michael Servetus of Villeneuve, in the kingdom of Arragon, in Spain: Because in his book he calls the Trinity a devil, and a monster with three heads; because contrary to

what Scripture says, he calls Jesus Christ a Son of David; and says that the baptism of little infants is only an invention of witchcraft; and because of many other points and articles and execrable blasphemies with which the said book is all stuffed, hugely scandalous and against the honor and majesty of God, of the Son of God, and of the Holy Spirit; and because Servetus, full of malice, has entitled his book thus directed against God and the holy evangelical doctrine, Restoration of Christianity, and that for the better seducing and deceiving the poor ignorants, and for more easily infecting with his unhappy and wretched poison the readers of his said book, under the shade of sound doctrine: therefore

'For these and other just reasons us hereto moving, desiring to purge the Church of God of such infection, and to cut off from it a corrupt member - having well consulted with our fellow-citizens, and having invoked the name of God to guide us to right judgment, sitting on the tribunal in the place of our ancestors having God, and His Holy Scriptures before our eyes, saying in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, by this our definite sentence which we give here in writing, we condemn thee, M. Servetus, to be bound, and led to the place of Champel, there to be fastened to a stake, and burned alive, with thy book, as well written by thy hand as printed, even till thy body be reduced to ashes, and thus wilt thou finish thy days, to furnish an example to others who might wish to commit the like.'

As said before, parts of his latest book were read as evidence against him, but there was a certain passage which the prosecution overlooked, so we will quote it here:

'The vital spirit,' wrote Servetus, 'is generated by the mixture in the lungs of the inspired air with the subtly elaborated blood, which the right ventricle sends to the left. The communication between the ventricles, however, is not made thru the midwall of the heart, but in a wonderful way the fluid blood is conducted by a long detour from the right ventricle thru the lungs, where it is acted on by the lungs and becomes

red in color, passes from the arteria venosa into the vena arteriosa, whence it is finally drawn by the diastole into the left ventricle.'

Reader, this remarkable passage was the first complete account of the lesser circulation! There stood Michael Servetus, the discoverer of the pulmonic circulation of the blood, the anticipator of Harvey, condemned to death for writing the book that contained the most momentous physiological discovery of the time. So effectually was the edition destroyed, that Harvey knew not his true precursor. Harvey quotes Realdus Columbus, but not Michael Servetus. But closer than Columbus or Caesalpinus or Vesalius or Fallopius, had Servetus come to solving the riddle of the circulation. He deserved the blessings of the world, but received a death-sentence. No voice was raised in his behalf. Not only John Calvin, but all Christendom, was guilty.

As the fatal day approached, a visitor entered Servetus' cell. It was John Calvin. The prisoner looked at the pale face and burning eyes of the bigot, but remained silent. His passion for discussion had deserted him- perhaps he had cast enough invaluable pearls before uncomprehending swine. The opponents parted forever.

-

It was the melancholy month October. Pensive Autumn faintly sighed, the trees had shed their glory, and the fields were filled with pain.

Under an ancient arcade the processions passed. Beneath the gate of the castle they marched. The Bourg-de-Four they crossed, and ascended the street of Saint Anthony. Southward they turned, and left the walls of the town. The LordLieutenant rode a mighty horse, and by his side galloped a herald. Behind them came the archers, and in the midst of all walked a proud and taciturn physician whose prescriptions had failed to purge the age of fanaticism. A crowd swelled the rear poor and unlearned but not one in all that throng envied him who walked in silence.