1532-1538. Studies of medicine in Paris
 As
"Villeneuve" Servetus studied mathematics and medicine
at colleges in Paris, then a center of religious ferment.
Nicholas Cop, Rector of the University, was forced to flee
the city after an inaugural address deemed too Protestant.
A young student of Servetus' acquaintance, John Calvin, who
may have written the address, had also to leave town and to
go into hiding. Sometime during the next year Calvin risked
his life to return to Paris that he might meet Servetus and
respond to his theological challenges.
Servetus, perhaps afraid of being seen with a fugitive, did
not show up. Driven to witness for his religious cause, he
yet felt unready to be its effective champion. "On this
account I delayed," he recalled, "and also because
of imminent persecution, so that with Jonah I longed rather
to flee to the sea or to one of the New Isles."
Servetus left temporarily Paris and began to support himself
in France by working as corrector of proof in Lyon, which
ranked next to Paris as a publishing center. He was employed
for over two years by Treschel, a famous publishing house.
In this capacity Servetus served as editor of a new edition
of Ptolemy’s Geography (1535), which the recent explorations
in the New World had made necessary. This work was enriched
by many pungent notes, and one of these, which spoke of Palestine
as a very poor country for a “promised land,”
afterwards brought him into trouble as a defamer of Moses.
Inspired by some of the medical works published by Trechsel,
Servetus decided to return to the study of medicine. From
1536-38 he was a medical student at the University of Paris.
He followed Andreas Vesalius as assistant to Hans Gunther
in dissection. Gunther wrote that "Michael Villonovanus"
had a knowledge of Galen "second to none." Servetus
soon came to differ from Galen in the matter of pulmonary
circulation. Galen had supposed aeration of the blood took
place in the heart and assigned the lungs a fairly minor function.
Servetus, by examining the wall of the heart and noting the
size of the pulmonary artery, concluded that transformation
of the blood, accomplished by the release of waste gases and
the infusion of air, occurred in the lungs. It is not clear
whether Servetus or a contemporary, unknown to Servetus, first
made this discovery. Servetus was the first to publish. Although
he only expressed the new knowledge as a lengthy metaphorical
aside in his theological writing, he was the first person
to record a modern understanding of pulmonary respiration.
In 1538 Servetus, as Villeneuve, got into trouble with the
faculty of medicine, the Parlement of Paris, and the Inquisition
for mixing astrology with medicine. Although he was acquitted
by the Inquisition, the Parlement ruled that his published
self-defense (Disceptatio
Pro Astrologia) was to be confiscated and he was to desist
from the practice of astrology. [To
know more about this]
Servetus left Paris shortly thereafter, perhaps without a
degree, to practice medicine in the area of Lyons. Around
1540 he became the personal physician of Pierre Palmier, Archbishop
of Vienne.
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