About thirteen moneths after his return to his own Countrey, on a sudden the ingrafted nose grew cold, putrified, and within few days drops off.

To those of his friends that were curious in the exploration of the cause of this unexpected misfortune, it was discovered, that the Porter expired, neer about the same punctilio of time, wherein the nose grew frigid and cadaverous.

There are at Bruxels yet surviving, some of good repute, that were eye-witnesses of these occurrences."(18) (18) Charleton: Of the Magnetic Cure of Wounds, London, 1650, p.
13.
Equally in the history of science and of medicine, 1542 is a starred year, marked by a revolution in our knowledge alike of Macrocosm and Microcosm.

In Frauenburg, the town physician and a canon, now nearing the Psalmist limit and his end, had sent to the press the studies of a lifetime--"De revolutionibus orbium coelestium." It was no new thought, no new demonstration that Copernicus thus gave to his generation.
Centuries before, men of the keenest scientific minds from Pythagoras on had worked out a heliocentric theory, fully promulgated by Aristarchus, and very generally accepted by the brilliant investigators of the Alexandrian school; but in the long interval, lapped in Oriental lethargy, man had been content to acknowledge that the heavens declare the glory of God and that the firmament sheweth his handiwork.

There had been great astronomers before Copernicus.