naturalist, creator and founder of modern anatomy.
He was one of the first to study the human body by dissection. He is the source of all later advances in anatomy.
The science of the human body is the most valuable field of knowledge for human beings and deserves extraordinary praise...
was born on 31 December 1514 in Brussels.
The medical profession and the history of medicine were the work of several generations of his family. Andreas' great-great-grandfather, Petro, was rector and professor at the University of Louvain, physician to Emperor Maximilian himself. A bibliophile and fascinated by medical treatises, he did not spare any money to obtain the manuscripts, spending part of his own money on them. Peter wrote a commentary on the fourth book of Autzeny, the great encyclopaedist "Canon of Medicine".
Andreas' great-grandfather, John, was also a teacher. He worked at the University of Louvain, lecturing in mathematics, and was also a physician. Everard, John's son and Andreas' grandfather, also followed in his father's footsteps, practising medicine. Andreas, the father of Andreas Vesalius, served as apothecary to Charles the Great's aunt, Princess Margaret.
The medical books, which were in the family library, were read to little Andreas by his mother.
A passion for studying anatomy appeared quite early. The boy was very curious about the corpses of domestic animals, learning about the structure of the organs.
Vicarious corpses
During Vesalius' time, under the influence of religious precepts, the law forbade the removal of corpses. But Andreas, 18 years old and passionate about science, is not deterred by any obstacles to finding the corpses he needs for his work.
Gemma Friese and his friend, the renowned physician, climbed the lattice, removed the bodies of the martyred and took them to the roadside in the bush.
Not without difficulty they then took them home, stored them in their own lodgings and carried out investigations at night.
Subsequently the soft tissues were cut up and the bones were boiled. All this had to be done with the utmost care and kept secret.
In his words, anatomy was the basis of medical knowledge.
THE MAIN PURPOSE OF THE SCIENTIST'S RESEARCH
was to describe correctly the location, formation and functions of the human body organs.
Five years of extraordinary efforts were crowned with succes.
Stefan Van Calcar.
the first anatomical atlas!
THE SUCCESS OF THE TREATISE BROUGHT HIM NOT ONLY MONEY, BUT ALSO FAME
He was appointed physician to Charles V, to whom Vesalius dedicated the work, and also donated the first copy.
The book was bound
in purple stitching,and the hand-drawn illustrations are not to be found in any other copy of "The Structure".
The publication is accompanied by more than 300 illustrations by Johannes Stephanus of Calcar, a fellow Vezalian and pupil of Titian.
The second edition of the book was published in 1555.
Brown University Library holds a copy of The Structure, bound in human leather. The cover is 'buffed to a light brown with a tint' and, according to those who have seen the book, looks like the best leather cover. The use of human leather for binding was not unusual just a couple of hundred years ago. The skin of executed criminals and the poor was used.
"On the Structure of the Human Body" is said to have been the origin of modern anatomy as a science.
For example, for centuries it was thought that man had one rib less (of course, from that rib God created Eve).
Vesalius' work was the foundation from which modern anatomy emerged. Vesalius had great respect for Galen.
He was captured by the space of his mind, and was able to point out small "inaccuracies" in his teachings. But there were over two hundred such additions. This essentially meant a refutation of Galen's core teachings (what had been the doctors' bible for almost 1500 years!).
After Vezalius' work was published, there was a real storm in science. Imagine you are a professor or even an academician, implementing some kind of hypothesis, a scientific idea all your life. You are building on some foundation built by scientists to you. And then a young man comes along who claims: all that you have been doing all your life is nonsense, to put it mildly. A teacher of Vesalius, for whom the authority of Galen was unyielding, called the scientist "a slandererer, a monster, a mad fool, who with his own stench is poisoning the air in Europe". And he issued a document which mocked Vezalius. Under this document all the enemies of Andreas united.
These teachings were canonised by the Church (true knowledge and not subject to verification!). Persecution led a desperate Vesalius to stop his research work, burned some of his manuscripts and materials. Went to war as chief military surgeon in the service of Charles V.
After the war he became Charles V's physician and then went into the service of his son, Philip II. The Spanish Inquisition persecuted Andreas, accusing him of murder for allegedly stabbing a living person to death while dissecting a corpse.
Vesalius is sentenced to death. In 1563 a noble lady bequeathed her body for an autopsy. The deceased's brother was present during the autopsy. After the anatomist cut open the ribs to extract the heart it started beating (as the deceased's brother claimed). Whether or not this appeared to the relative, who knew nothing about medicine, or whether it was an elaborate slander, no one knows.
In the future, Philip II intervened and replaced his punishment with a pilgrimage to Palestine. The ship on which the scientist returns from his perilous voyage crashes, and the anatomist finds himself on the shores of the small island of Zante (Greece), where he falls seriously ill and soon dies.
On 15 October 1564, at the age of 50, the soul of the father of anatomy is laid to rest on a small island.
The sources used:
Заговора М. Засновник новітньої анатомії – Андреас Везалій / М. Заговора // Бібліотерапевт : бюлетень Наукової бібліотеки Хаківського національного медичного університету. – 2019. – №6(57). – С. 8.
Заговора М. Засновник новітньої анатомії – Андреас Везалій / М. Заговора // Бібліотерапевт : бюлетень Наукової бібліотеки Хаківського національного медичного університету. – 2019. – №7/8(58-59). – С. 8.
Андреас Везалій цікаві факти [Електронний ресурс]. – Режим доступу: https://dovidka.biz.ua/andreas-vezaliy-tsikavi-fakti-ta-biografiyahttps://dovidka.biz.ua/andreas-vezaliy-tsikavi-fakti-ta-biografiya/
Паламарчук В. Как зарождалась анатомия: Андреас Везалий [Електронний ресурс] / В. Паламарчук. – Режим доступу: https://vpalamarchuk.ru/surgeon/history/andreas-vezalij.html.
The photos and videos used are from public Internet sources and belong to the authors.
