Suddenly, early in the year 1564, for a reason which has never been explained satisfactorily, Vesalius left Madrid. Apparently he was at the height of success. He was famous as a physician and surgeon; he was a favorite at the Spanish court; he had amassed a fortune; and seemingly he was destined to pass his remaining days under the most favorable surroundings. As occurs to all great men, he had excited the jealous animosity of many of the members of his profession. The efforts of the Madrid physicians to ignore the talents of one whom they regarded as a foreigner, long since had reacted to the advantage of the Archiatrus.

During the twenty years that he had filled the post of Archiatrus, the scalpel of Vesalius was rusting: but the controversy concerning the infallibility of Galen was still raging. The violent criticisms of Sylvius upon the Fabrica had been silenced by death, but others took up the cause of Galen where Sylvius had left it. But the passing years had brought a new coterie of professors, who, like Fallopius at Padua; Rondelet at Montpellier; Massa at Venice; and Fuchs at TÜbingen, were boldly teaching many things that were contrary to Galen.

Life at the Spanish court was not favorable to the study of science. “The hand of the Church”, says Foster[28], “was heavy on the land; the dagger of the Inquisition was stabbing at all mental life, and its torch was a sterilizing flame sweeping over all intellectual activity. The pursuit of natural knowledge had become a crime, and to search with the scalpel into the secrets of the body of man was accounted sacrilege. It was for a life in priest-ridden, ignorant, superstitious Madrid that Vesalius had forsaken the freedom of the Venetian Republic and the bright academic circles of Padua; in Madrid, where, as he himself has said, ‘he could not lay his hand on so much as a dried skull, much less have the chance of making a dissection’. Moreover, he must have felt the loss of Charles, who, whatever his faults, recognized the worth of intellectual efforts, and in many ways had shown his sympathy with Vesalius’s love of knowledge. Such sympathy could not be looked for in the narrow and bigoted Philip”.

About this time Vesalius received a copy of the Observationes Anatomicae of his pupil Fallopius, who, having learned all that his master had taught of anatomy, continued his studies with great skill and industry. Such a book, coming at an opportune time, must have seemed like a voice calling the Archiatrus back to the intellectual life, bringing to his mind’s eye the recollection of his happy days in Italy.

Vesalius travelled to Venice by way of Perpignan. While in Venice he visited the printer, Francesco Sanese, and discussed the publication of a new book which should contain his reply to Fallopius. In a short time he started for Cyprus in company with Jacobo Malatesta, the commander of the Venetian forces in that island. Thence he passed to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Vesalius never returned from that journey. Information of his death reached Brussels towards the end of that year—1564.

What was the reason for this pilgrimage? Various alleged authorities have given different versions, many of which are evidently fictitious. The most reasonable account, which emanates from Spanish-French sources, dates from a letter written January 1, 1565, to the physician Caspar Peucer by Hubert Languer, or Hubertus Languetus, the Huguenot friend of Philip Sidney, which says:—“They say that Vesalius is dead. Doubtless you have heard that he went to Jerusalem. That journey had, as they tell us from Spain, an odd reason. Vesalius, believing a young Spanish nobleman whom he had attended to be dead, obtained leave of the parents to open the body for the sake of inquiring into the cause of the illness, which he had not rightly comprehended. This was granted; but he had no sooner made an incision into the body than he perceived the symptoms of life, and opening the breast, saw the heart beat. The parents coming afterwards to the knowledge of this, were not satisfied with prosecuting him for murder, but accused him to the Inquisition of impiety, in hopes that he would be punished with greater rigor by the judges of that tribunal than by those of the common law. But the King of Spain interposed, and saved him on condition that by way of atoning for the error he should undertake a pilgrimage to the Holy Land”.

The pilgrimage was made, the Holy Sepulcher was visited, and the weary wanderer had started for Padua to take the chair which was made vacant by the death of Fallopius. A violent storm swept the Ionian Sea. Vesalius’s ship was wrecked upon the island of Zakynthos, where, on the fifteenth day of October, 1564, the Archiatrus died of exhaustion.

Such was the miserable end of Andreas Vesalius of Brussels, a man, who, before he had attained his thirtieth year, had become the greatest anatomist that the world has ever seen.