Transcript Slide 1

Renaissance Anatomy
1) How did Vesalius
revolutionize the study
of human anatomy?
2) How did he follow in
the traditions of ancient
anatomy?
3) Why is humanism
necessary to any
understanding 16thcentury anatomy?
Andreas Vesalius
Louvain (1530)
Paris (1533)
Padua (1537)
Six Anatomical Pictures
(1538)
larger supply of human
cadavers (1539)
De fabrica (1543)
Frontispiece, De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1543)
Books of De fabrica (1543)
I. Skeletal system
II. Muscular
III. Vascular
IV. Nervous
V. Abdominal & reproductive
organs
VI. Heart & thorax
VII. Brain
Book I, De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1543)
Indeed, those who are now dedicated to the ancient study
of medicine, almost restored to its pristine splendor in
many schools, are beginning to learn to their satisfaction
how little and how feebly men have labored in the field of
Anatomy to this day from the times of Galen, who,
although easily chief of the masters, nevertheless did not
dissect the human body; and the fact is now evident that
he described . . . the fabric of the ape’s body, although
the latter differs from the former in many respects.
Vesalius, De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1543)
Why, I pray, should we not say those anatomists are
rough and untrained who have passed on to posterity
Galenic descriptions that are false in some respects and
in most cases apply to apes and dogs but not humans,
as if they had observed them in man, and were in no way
afraid, like scribes, to enumerate things they never saw
even in a dream, and often misunderstood in Galen’s
books? . . . [Let] us dismiss the remaining Galenists, who
have obstructed rather than aided the understanding of
human anatomy, and reconsider at greater depth the
opinion of Galen, who is easily the leader of all
professors of anatomy, lest we seem discreditably to
have neglected his authority as well.
Vesalius, De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1543)
Not long ago I would not have dared to turn aside even a
hair’s breadth from Galen. But it seems to me that the
septum of the heart is as thick, dense and compact as the
rest of the heart. I do not see, therefore, how even the
smallest particle can be transferred from the right to the
left ventricle through the septum.
Vesalius, De Humani Corporis Fabrica (2nd ed., 1555)