Voices in Time

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I had always desired to know everything concerning medicine, even those parts commonly neglected. I was mindful, too, of the multitude of physicians in Basel, among whom I could make my way only by superior knowledge. I could not expect to be assisted by my father, who was overwhelmed with debt, had only a small income, and was reduced to living on what revenue came from the boarders in his school. The desire to learn made me follow with attention not only the lectures and ordinary studies but also the preparation of remedies in the pharmacy, a matter I found very useful later. Further, I collected plants and arranged them properly on paper. But my principal study was anatomy. Not only did I never miss the dissections of men and animals that took place in the College, but I also took part in every secret autopsy of corpses, and I came to put my own hand to the scalpel, despite the repulsion I had felt at first. I joined with French students and exposed myself to danger to procure subjects. A bachelor of medicine named Gallotus, who had married a woman from Montpellier and was passing rich, would lend us his house. He invited me with some others to join him in nocturnal expeditions outside the town to dig up bodies freshly buried in the cloister cemetery, and we carried them to his house for dissection. We had spies to tell us of burials and to lead us by night to the graves.

Our first excursion of this kind took place on November 11, 1554. As night fell Gallotus led us out of the town to the monastery of the Augustins, where we met a monk called Brother Bernhard, a determined fellow, who had disguised himself in order to help us. When we came to the monastery, we stayed to drink, quietly, until midnight. Then, in complete silence and with swords in hand, we made our way to the cemetery of the monastery of Saint-Denis. There we dug up a corpse with our hands, the earth being still loose because the burial had taken place only that day. As soon as we had uncovered it, we pulled it out with ropes, wrapped it in a flassada, and carried it on two poles as far as the gates of the town. It must then have been about three o’clock in the morning. We put the corpse to one side and knocked on the postern that is opened for coming and going at night, and the old porter came in his shirt to open it for us. We asked him to bring us something to drink—under the pretext that we were dying of thirst—and while he went in search of wine, three of us brought the cadaver in and carried it directly to Gallotus’ house, which was not far away. The porter was not suspicious, and we rejoined our companions. On opening the winding sheet in which the body was sewn, we found a woman with a congenital deformity of the legs, the two feet turned inward. We did an autopsy and found, among other curiosities, various veins vasorum spermaticorum, which were not deformed, but followed the curve of the legs toward the buttocks. She had a lead ring, and as I detest these, it added to my disgust.

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