41/365, 22/30 Claudius Galenus, 160 AD, to Andreas Vesalius, 1528

You knew where your knowledge came from,
translating our parchments,
regurgitating the wisdom of venerated ancients.
What had been known for millennia,
passed on as fact since first penned by scholars
in original Greek and Latin,
held authority by mere fact of age.
In an era of infection
surgery in the middle ages was unsafe, uncommon,
and unlikely to improve one's health.
My anatomical texts, fourteen centuries old,
illustrations still in use,
the only detailed illustrations in existence.
I may have been a plagiarist,
held Hippocrates in high regard.
Too bad my images of human anatomy
came from dissection of pigs and monkeys.
You got me, Vesalius,
dissected a cadaver you stole from the morgue,
called my bluff.
exposed me for the fraud that I was,
dated to suggest that the ancients were wrong,
that I'd never dissected a human, in truth,
that the myths of the Greeks,
the heavenly crystal spheres,
the cursory pull of gravity on objects of different masses,
could be called into question.
disproven as myth
as legend
as the musings of pompous men
devoid of accountability.
You will change the premise of academia, Vesalius.
They will look to disprove us
seek to discover for themselves
to leave our books on dusty shelves
our parchments unrolled.
You and your curiosity.
You,
and your accurate studies.
They will disprove you soon enough.
They will plead for a return to the simple days.
When those of us who were often wrong
could claim to always be right.