Public Anatomy by Pearson A. Scott

Author:Pearson A. Scott
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Midpoint Trade Books
Published: 2011-06-13T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Salyer’s student’s car had been parked in front of the Rebel Yell for only five minutes and already the vinyl seats were too hot to touch. Salyer climbed in the backseat and lay down on it long ways. He said nothing during the short drive back to his office. Eli didn’t know if he was hiding, trying to nap, or what. When they arrived, Salyer told the graduate student to take the afternoon off. Eli followed the professor into Ventress Hall. He was surprised by how easily the man took the stairs after several midday drinks. Once inside his office, Salyer locked the door behind them. Then, he removed a key from the back of his desk drawer and opened the closet he’d converted into a shrine to the sixteenth century anatomist.

During his college year abroad in London, Eli learned the history of Vesalius, anatomist from Brussels, author of De Humani Corporis Fabrica Librim Septum, the fabric of the human body. Little did Eli know that a series of murders would bring him back to Vasalius’s work.

The renegade, Renaissance anatomist had published the seven books that comprised the Fabrica in 1543, the same year Copernicus published his heliocentric theory De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, on the revolutions of the celestial spheres. Just as Copernicus had proven that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the universe, Eli learned that Vesalius had proved Galen wrong in many aspects of anatomical dissection. He knew that Galen’s anatomical teachings were based on his observed dissections in dogs and monkeys, for instance, whereas Vesalius performed the dissections on humans, often executed criminals he pulled from the gallows himself.

Centuries later, the Fabrica’s woodcut illustrations were considered works of art. And Salyer’s passion. Eli knew the anatomist-turned-history-professor never missed a chance to lecture. As though giving a confessional, Salyer faced the iron-gated door and spoke of just these Vesalian details.

Standing behind Salyer, Eli glanced at his watch. He was scheduled to work a graveyard shift in the ER and hoped to return to Memphis a few hours before it started. At this rate, that would not happen. Finally, Salyer unlocked the door.

The tiny room allowed Eli to enter only a couple of steps, more step-in closet than walk-in. The Fabrica rested on a podium of sorts that slanted forward to display the over four-hundred-year-old masterpiece, which was measured at least three times larger than a dictionary and twice as thick. Salyer turned on an overhead light that illuminated the book’s magnificent cover. Tiny illustrated scenes, each no larger than a postage stamp, were carved into tanned vellum. Eli squinted to see the details, one scene showing a priest kneeling and ministering to the sick.

Salyer had pulled on a pair of white cotton gloves. He opened the cover to the title page, a magnificently detailed rendering of Vesalius at a public dissection. The drawing showed the anatomist in the center of an outdoor theatre framed by a semicircle of Corinthian columns. A host of onlookers surrounded him: scholars, students, and rogues who had ventured in to see the spectacle.

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