Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 274

MICHAEL SERVETUS (1511?-1553) An impartial history of Michael Servetus. Printed for Aaron Ward 1724 [2] 216 pp. 19.2 cm.

The name of Sir Benjamin Hodges (fl. 1700), the book's author, does not appear anywhere in the book. It probably was not included because an entire English edition of Servetus' Christianismi restitutio (1553) was seized and destroyed only the year before. Nearly another century passed before the treatise was allowed to be published in Europe. Hodges provides a sympathetic account of the last years of Servetus' life when he was embroiled with church authorities on charges of heresy and was zealously persecuted by John Calvin. Extensive verbal proceedings before the Court of the Inquisition as well as statements from Servetus' writings proving his heretical beliefs are also included in the account. In his Christianismi restitutio Servetus made some of his most bold and forthright statements. It was this book, his refusal to recant his beliefs concerning the Trinity, and his many other questionings of the church's strict dogma that ultimately led to his death by fire at Geneva. All but three of the one thousand copies of the book were recovered and burned with him making it one of the rarest of Renaissance books. Chiefly a religious treatise, Servetus discusses little medicine or physiology in the book. However, during a discussion of the vital spirit, he gave the first description of the lesser or pulmonary circulation. Nevertheless, it went unnoticed and had no effect on the physiological thinking of the time.

Cited references: Cushing I2; Osler 853; Waller 17754

Gift of John Martin, M.D.