While making his observations the heart of the outraged body was seen to palpitate--so at least it was reported.

This was brought immediately to the attention of the Inquisition, and it was only by the intervention of the king himself that the anatomist escaped the usual fate of those accused by that tribunal.

As it was, he was obliged to perform a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

While returning from this he was shipwrecked, and perished from hunger and exposure on the island of Zante.
At the very time when the anatomical writings of Vesalius were startling the medical world, there was living and working contemporaneously another great anatomist, Eustachius (died 1574), whose records of his anatomical investigations were ready for publication only nine years after the publication of the work of Vesalius.

Owing to the unfortunate circumstances of the anatomist, however, they were never published during his lifetime--not, in fact, until 1714.