Andreas Vesalius
Andreas Vesalius an anatomist and doctor. He was born to Andries van Wesele and Isabel Crabbe on December 31, 1514in Brussels, Belgium. His father and grandfather were both physicians. His father served as pharmacist to Margaret of Austria and later to Emperor Charles V. While his great-grandfather, Johannes Wesalia, was the head of the medical school at the University of Louvain, where Vesalius started attending in 1530. He was forced to leave before finishing, when the Roman Empire declared war on France. He then went to the University of Louvain and afterward to the University of Padua. He graduated in1537and was offered the chair of Surgery and Anatomy. During this time surgery and anatomy were considered the least important branches in medicine. Vesalius obviously thought otherwise.
Vesalius strongly believed that the study of human anatomy should be observable. The only way to do this according to him was dissecting human bodies. During Galen’s time Greek and Roman laws prohibited the dissection of human beings. When Andreas began dissecting corpse, producing anatomical charts of the blood and nervous systems for his students, he became more familiar with the human body. Vesalius started noticing Galen’s mistakes. Galen claimed that the human breastbone was made of seven segments when in reality it is three. Many anatomist had questions here and there about Galen’s work but Vesalius saw something seriously wrong with it. He looked at Galen’s work more in depth and figured Galen must have made his observations examining his patients during surgery and dissecting animals.
Andreas Vesalius is widely considered to be the founder of the modern science of anatomy his book De Humani Commis Fabrica” translated to On the Structure of the Human Body in 1543. The book became the first complete and systematic description of the human body. The publication of his works increased his popularity as a teacher and man of medicine. Many of his...