Andreas Vesalius - 1514-1564

Andreas Vesalius was born in Brussels on December 31, 1514. After having spent some disappointing years at the Universities of Louvain and Paris, he graduated as Doctor of Medicine in Padua on December 5, 1537. The next day he was appointed as a teacher of both human anatomy and surgery. During the 6 years he held this chair. Vesalius engaged in impressive academic activities and published three masterly anatomic books: Tabulae Anatomicae Sex, De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem, and Epitome. The last two works contain anatomic woodcuts of incomparable artistic quality by Titian's pupils (by Stefan v. Calcar in particular). In 1544, at the age of 28, Vesalius gave up his chair and took up service as a court physician, first with Emperor Charles V and later with his son, Philip II of Spain. He died in 1564 on the small Greek island of Zante on return from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The gist of Vesalius' teaching was his conviction that valid anatomic knowledge could be gained only through dissection of the human corpse and not through the study of the traditional texts. Vesalius rid the study of human anatomy of mythic speculations, which had encrusted it for two millennia. Through Vesalius' work, human anatomy became an empirical science. Like copernicus, Kepler, Bruno, and Galileo, Vesalius was one of the initiators of the new science. The tables of osteology and of the spine in Fabrica and Epitome are most impressive. Much of the nomenclature used for the spine today can be credited to him.