32 Facts About Vesalius

Andreas Vesalius was a 16th-century anatomist, physician, and author of one of the most influential books on human anatomy, De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem .

Vesalius is often referred to as the founder of modern human anatomy.

Vesalius was born in Brussels, which was then part of the Habsburg Netherlands.

Andreas Vesalius is the Latinized form of the Dutch name Andries van Wesel.

Vesalius's name is given as Andrea Vesalius, Andre Vesale, Andrea Vesalio, Andreas Vesal, Andres Vesalio and Andre Vesale.

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In 1528 Vesalius entered the University of Leuven taking arts, but when his father was appointed as the Valet de Chambre in 1532 he decided instead to pursue a career in the military at the University of Paris, where he moved in 1533.

Vesalius was forced to leave Paris in 1536 owing to the opening of hostilities between the Holy Roman Empire and France and returned to the University of Leuven.

Vesalius completed his studies there and graduated the following year.

Vesalius's doctoral thesis, Paraphrasis in nonum librum Rhazae medici Arabis clarissimi ad regem Almansorem, de affectuum singularum corporis partium curatione, was a commentary on the ninth book of Rhazes.

Vesalius guest-lectured at the University of Bologna and the University of Pisa.

Vesalius considered hands-on direct observation to be the only reliable resource.

Vesalius created detailed illustrations of anatomy for students in the form of six large woodcut posters.

Vesalius followed this in 1539 with an updated version of Winter's anatomical handbook, Institutiones anatomicae.

In 1541, while in Bologna, Vesalius discovered that all of Galen's research was restricted to animals, since dissection had been banned in ancient Rome.

Vesalius contributed to the new Giunta edition of Galen's collected works and began to write his own anatomical text based on his own research.

Until Vesalius pointed out Galen's substitution of animal for human anatomy, it had gone unnoticed and had long been the basis of studying human anatomy.

In 1543, Vesalius conducted a public dissection of the body of Jakob Karrer von Gebweiler, a notorious felon from the city of Basel, Switzerland.

Vesalius assembled and articulated the bones, finally donating the skeleton to the University of Basel.

That work, now collectively referred to as the Fabrica of Vesalius, was groundbreaking in the history of medical publishing and is considered to be a major step in the development of scientific medicine.

Vesalius was 28 years old when the first edition of Fabrica was published.

Vesalius took up the offered position in the imperial court, where he had to deal with other physicians who mocked him for being a mere barber surgeon instead of an academic working on the respected basis of theory.

In 1555, Vesalius became physician to Philip II, and in the same year he published a revised edition of De humani corporis fabrica.

In 1564 Vesalius went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, some said, in penance after being accused of dissecting a living body.

Vesalius sailed with the Venetian fleet under James Malatesta via Cyprus.

Some time, it was assumed that Vesalius's pilgrimage was due to the pressures imposed on him by the Inquisition.

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Vesalius dedicated it to Philip II of Spain, son of the Emperor.

Vesalius's book contains drawings of several organs on two leaves.

Vesalius described the omentum and its connections with the stomach, the spleen and the colon; gave the first correct views of the structure of the pylorus; observed the small size of the caecal appendix in man; gave the first good account of the mediastinum and pleura and the fullest description of the anatomy of the brain up to that time.

Vesalius did not understand the inferior recesses, and his account of the nerves is confused by regarding the optic as the first pair, the third as the fifth, and the fifth as the seventh.

In 1538, Vesalius wrote Epistola, docens venam axillarem dextri cubiti in dolore laterali secandam, commonly known as the Venesection Letter, which demonstrated a revived venesection, a classical procedure in which blood was drawn near the site of the ailment.

Vesalius sought to locate the precise site for venesection in pleurisy within the framework of the classical method.

Influence of Vesalius' plates representing the partial dissections of the human figure posing in a landscape setting is apparent in the anatomical plates prepared by the Baroque painter Pietro da Cortona, who executed anatomical plates with figures in dramatic poses, most of them with architectural or landscape backdrops.