Andreas Vesalius (1514 - 1564)

History - Medicine through time - 16th Century
Vesalius made important discoveries in anatomy and respectfully corrected the mistakes of the famous Roman anatomist Galen. He also established the important link between science and illustration in his book Tabulae Sex and, more famously, the 1543 edition of the Fabric of the Human Body (Humani Corporis Fabrica). 

Vesalius was born into a medical family and grew up around medical books. The fact that the medical profession ran in his family meant that he was more likely to get a job in medicine, and the fact that his family were well educated meant that he was more likely to get a place in a university (which he did, Louvain 1528-1533 and then he moved to Padua, Paris).

Vesalius was a fan of Galen’s ideas and made many ameliorations to his theories without openly challenging him. An example of this would be that in the Tabulae Sex (1538), he showed the human liver to have five lobes (as Galen wrote) instead of two, even though he knew that it had two because he had performed the dissection himself (he also made a drawing of a two lobed liver in a different view). He strongly believed in illustrations to help readers understand exactly which part of the body he was talking about and how exactly it was made up. As such, he personally invigilated every single carving of his illustrations. In 1543 he left Padua to spend months with the printer in Basel. This was while he was planning his book ‘The Fabric of the Human Body’ which was published in 1543. He also wrote a summary of his book, called the Epitome.

He dedicated the Fabric to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, and was given a job at Charles’ court. From here he published another edition of the Fabric with more changes on Galen’s theories but he went on as a doctor, not an anatomist.

In the Fabric, he suggested public dissections and led the way with a new way of publishing books by using illustrations. He was helped by the introduction of the printing press by John Gutenberg in 1454 which allowed his diagrams to be accurately reproduced in copies of his books.

In his Letter on Venesection, he argued in favour of the classical doctors, saying that more blood should be taken and that it should be taken from the same side of the body as the illness.