Andreas Vesalius

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Andreas Vesalius, now known as the father of modern human anatomy, was born into a family of physicians in Brussels in the early sixteenth century. At a young age, he developed an interest in the anatomy and inner mechanisms of living things. His desire to learn more led him to medical school, where he dedicated himself to understanding the secrets of the human body and delving into the until then taboo practice of human dissection. He was ambitious, arrogant, extroverted, energetic, and “well aware of his own historical significance” and his publication, De Humani Corporus Fabrica Libri Septum, often referred to as simply Fabrica, was extraordinary. It is known all over the world by medical students as the “greatest single contribution to …show more content…

Later in his career however, he returned to Louvain and convinced the administration to reinstate anatomy in the curriculum, which marks the beginning of his fame. Remarkably, he published the book in 1543, when he was only twenty eight years old. After his book was published, and he released a second, smaller and cheaper version called the Epitome designed for medical students to study more easily, Vesalius’ reputation as “the best physician in the world” grew and he soon left teaching to become a surgeon on the battlefield to Emperor Charles V. In 1564, Vesalius died on an island near Greece due to shipwreck. The publication of Vesalius’ De Humani Corporus Fabrica was the greatest turning point for medical science because it fundamentally changed the way people thought of human anatomy, how it was taught, and how it was …show more content…

Before Vesalius, dissection was seen as completely unethical and forbidden almost universally. At the beginning of the Renaissance, dissection was finally allowed in a select few city-states in Italy on only a few executed criminals each year. Before Vesalius, teaching dissection was usually performed by three individuals: a physician sitting on a podium high above the actual dissection reading from a textbook, an often inexperienced barber-surgeon performing the dissection, and an ostensor pointing out the parts of the body to the students as they were mentioned. “Vesalius himself preferred to fulfill all three roles, performing the dissection himself while also lecturing and pointing out what he was discussing.” Vesalius emphasized very often to his students to not simply accept what you are told, but to see things for yourself and form your own opinions. He showed this in Fabrica by including a large depiction of various tools used for dissection in order to tell the reader that not only his discoveries were based on legitimate dissections, but that it is encouraged to perform dissections on your own to come to your own conclusions. Vesalius also showed this idea on the title page of Fabrica, by depicting a quite crowded dissection performed by Vesalius himself, who has his hand on the cadaver, signifying the importance of discovery by one’s self. This idea

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