Andreas Vesalius entered the history of medicine as the founder of modern anatomy. The scientist had to step over the numerous prohibitions that the church imposed on scientific research. He was even one step away from being burned at the stake by the Inquisition. Only the intervention of strong patrons saved him from a painful death.
From the biography of Andreas Vesalius
The founder of scientific anatomy was born on December 31, 1514 in Brussels. His father was a pharmacist, and his grandfather was engaged in medicine. This largely determined the life path of Vesalius. He received a solid medical education, studying sciences first in Paris, then in the Netherlands.
In those days, autopsies were prohibited. Physicians drew their knowledge of anatomy from the works of Galen and Aristotle. Andreas Vesalius was the first to break this tradition. As a student, he managed to get hold of the corpse of a hanged criminal, from which he completely dissected the skeleton.
In 1537, Vesalius, who had received his doctorate by that time, began his career by teaching surgery and anatomy at the University of Padua. It was difficult to conduct research without anatomical material. From time to time, Vesalius contrived to get at his disposal the corpses of executed criminals. Often he and his students had to steal bodies from a cemetery in Padua.
Making autopsies, Vesalius accompanied the work with sketches, while developing methods for dissecting the dead. After several years of hard work, Vesalius completed a voluminous treatise on anatomy. The book "On the Structure of the Human Body" was published in 1543 in Basel. In it, the author argued that Galen's anatomy was erroneous, since it was compiled on the basis of the study of animals, not people. Andreas Vesalius corrected more than two hundred Galen's mistakes regarding the structure of human internal organs. The edition was illustrated by S. Kalkar, friend of Vesalius. In 1955, the second edition of the book was published, which for two hundred years was the only manual for medical students.
Vesalius is not only a famous theorist, but also a practitioner in the field of medicine. He served as court physician for the emperors Philip II and Charles V. However, closeness to royalty did not save Vesalius from persecution by the Inquisition. He was expected to be burned at the stake, but then the punishment was replaced by compulsion to a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. In 1564 Vesalius was returning from Jerusalem. As a result of the shipwreck, the scientist ended up on the island of Zante. Here he ended his days on October 15 of the same year.
Merits of Vesalius in the field of medicine
Andreas Vesalius is rightly considered the “father of anatomy”. He was one of the first in Europe to study the structure of the human body and its organs. He did this by performing autopsies on the dead. All later advances in the field of anatomy originate with the research of Vesalius.
In those days, almost every area of human knowledge, including medicine, was under the control of the church. Violation of the prohibitions on autopsy was mercilessly punished. However, such prohibitions did not stop the scientist striving for true knowledge. He risked stepping over the forbidden line.
Researchers note the extraordinary erudition of Vesalius. This is not surprising, because even in childhood, he actively used the family library, where there were many treatises on medicine. Andreas even then remembered many of the discoveries made by his predecessors, and even commented on them in his writings.
Vesalius made significant contributions to the theory of critical care medicine. He was one of the first scientists to describe aneurysm. Vesalius' contribution to the development of anatomical terminology can hardly be overestimated. It was he who introduced into circulation such words as the mitral valve of the heart, alveoli, choanal. Even in his student years, Vesalius described the femur without errors and opened the seminal vessels. The scientist also presented his confirmation of the theory of Hippocrates, according to which the brain can be damaged without breaking the bones of the skull. The world's first dissection of a human skeleton was also carried out by Andreas Vesalius.
