Schaff - History of the Christian Church Vol. 8 - Media Sabda Org

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§ 143. SERVETUS AS A PHYSICIAN, SCIENTIST, AND
ASTROLOGER.
Being supplied with the necessary funds, Servetus returned to Paris in 1536
and took his degrees as magister and doctor of medicine. He acquired great
fame as a physician.
The medical world was then divided into two schools,—the Galenists, who
followed Hippocrates and Galen, and the Averrhoists, who followed
Averrhoes and Avicenna. Servetus was a pupil of Champier, and joined the
Greek school, but had an open eye to the truth of the Arabians.
He published in 1537 a learned treatise on Syrups and their use in
medicine. It is his most popular book, and passed through four editions in
ten years. f1060
He discovered the pulmonary circulation of the blood or the passage of the
blood from the right to the left chamber of the heart through the lungs by
the pulmonary artery and vein. He published it, not separately, but in his
work on the Restitution of Christianity, as a part of his theological
speculation on the vital spirits. The discovery was burnt and buried with
this book; but nearly a hundred years later William Harvey (1578–1658),
independently, made the same discovery. f1061
Servetus lectured in the University on geography and astrology, and gained
much applause, but excited also the envy and ill-will of his colleagues,
whom he treated with overbearing pride and contempt.
He wrote an “Apologetic Dissertation on Astrology,” f1062 and severely
attacked the physicians as ignoramuses, who in return denounced him as an
impostor and wind-bag. The senate of the University sided with the
physicians, and the Parliament of Paris forbade him to lecture on astrology
and to prophesy from the stars (1538). f1063
He left Paris for Charlieu, a small town near Lyons, and practised medicine
for two or three years.
At his thirtieth year he thought that, after the example of Christ, he should
be rebaptized, since his former baptism was of no value. He denied the
analogy of circumcision. The Jews, he says, circumcised infants, but
baptized only adults. This was the practice of John the Baptist; and Christ,
who had been circumcised on the eighth day, was baptized when he