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One would wish, too, for a glimpse of what was passing through the mind of another man, who has been daily in that sick chamber, according to Olivarez's statement, since the first of the month: but he is one who has had, for some years past, even more reason than Alva for not speaking his mind.

Dionysius Daza, who was there with the other physicians and surgeons, tells a different story: "The most learned, famous, and rare Baron Vesalius," he says, advised that the skull should be trepanned; but his advice was not followed. Olivarez's account agrees with that of Daza. They had opened the wounds, he says, down to the skull before Vesalius came.

Therefore the learned morosophs who were gathered round Don Carlos's sick bed had become according to their own confession, utterly confused, terrified, and at their wits' end. It is the 7th of May, the eighteenth day after the accident according to Olivarez's story: he and Dr Vega have been bleeding the unhappy prince, enlarging the wound twice, and torturing him seemingly on mere guesses.

Whether this second operation of the 7th of May was performed by Vesalius, and whether it was that of which Bloet speaks, is an open question. Olivarez's whole relation is apologetic, written to justify himself and his seven Spanish colleagues, and to prove Vesalius in the wrong. Public opinion, he confesses, had been very fierce against him.