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 16th-century 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)

Book I, 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

Vesalius, 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 (2nd ed., 1555)

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.