Johannes Opirinus, the Latinized form of Johann Herbst, was born in 1507 to a poor family in Basel. His artist father could not pay to educate his son, so he home-schooled the boy until the talented youth was accepted to a boarding school for scholars in Strasburg.
Johannes studied the classics in the original Greek, Latin and Hebrew. Then, after four years of formal education, he returned to Basel and obtained a job with the famous printing house of Johann Froben. He studied medicine for a while, then went on to become a professor of Latin and later Greek at the university. When stricter qualifications were put into effect for professors at the university, he returned to the printing business and eventually set up as an independent printer in 1539.
Perhaps because he had experienced the deprivations of poverty, Johannes was said to be of a generous nature, which was a rare companion trait to the successful businessman of then or now. Not surprisingly, his firm struggled, yet despite his constant financial woes he had gained a reputation as a thorough artisan and a man willing to take a risk on a project if he believed in it. He understood the significance of Vesalius’ masterpiece and he produced the Fabrica with the reverence it deserved, not knowing at the time whether he would ever recoup his investment.
In 1555, he printed a clearer, more highly praised second edition on heavier paper. Since there were no laws protecting published books at the time, the first edition had already been widely plagiarized, making sales of this newer version even less likely than the first. Some of his investment in this later production was eventually returned to Johannes from Vesalius who had recently inherited his father’s estate.
Johannes Opirinus connects us back to Basel, home of the famous publishing house of Johann Froben. After taking a job in Froben’s printing company, Johannes Opirinus became a student and secretary to Froben’s physician and houseguest, the fiery Paracelsus, who had been treating Froben’s chronic leg ulcers. Opirinus accompanied the mercurial Paracelsus on some of his wanderings throughout the continent and ultimately came to see his mentor as an impossibly cantankerous, loudmouth drunk. The two parted ways, with Opirinus proceeding to publish the greatest scientific book of the age, whereas Paracelsus went on to become the scourge of the Doctors of Physick and the reckless apostate who would challenge the Galenist paradigm.
Johannes died in 1568. He was thought highly enough by those who knew him and his work to be buried in the Basel cathedral.
The genius of Vesalius and the reverence with which Opirinis published the Fabrica is beyond doubt. But they were men of their time, and the few mistakes that Vesalius made were usually due to the limitations of the available techniques. Science builds on its established foundation, such that we now know that there are no pores in the septum of the heart to allow blood to pass from the right (venous)to the left (arterial) side of the circulation. Galen had pronounced such a necessity and Vesalius, unable to prove any other visible mechanism had agreed. It would take several decades and the indispensable aid of a microscope to close the loop and describe a continuous circulation of the blood. The man who discovered those connections was a gifted scientist and a friend of Lionardo DiCapua named Marcello Malpighi. I will present his story in the next blog.
Thank you for reading. Please follow my posts and comment. Also you can read more about Lionardo DiCapua in my book From Superstition to Science: Lionardo DiCapua and the Uncertainty of Medicine.
