Guidi’s treatise on anatomy was first published at Venice (under the editorship of his nephew) in 1611—i.e., forty-two years after his death. His translations from the Greek treatises of Hippocrates, Galen and Oribasius will be found in the work which bears the title “Collectio Chirurgica Parisina,” Paris, 1544.
Berengarius of Carpi (a small town in Northern Italy), who died in 1530, is pronounced by Kurt Sprengel a worthy predecessor of Vesalius. He was Professor of Anatomy, first at Pavia and then at Bologna (from 1502 to 1527), and he is reported to have dissected more than one hundred(!) cadavers during that period. Fallopius and Eustachius were among his pupils, and it was their opinion that he did more than anybody else to revive the interest in anatomical work. The famous sculptor, Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571), is authority for the statement that Berengarius was not only an experienced anatomist and practicing physician, but also a very skilful draughtsman; the three works which he published being illustrated with a certain number of original woodcuts that are not without interest both to the anatomist and to the lover of art.
Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564) was born at Brussels, of German parents whose home was located at Wessels on the Rhine,—whence the name “Vesalius.” His father was the apothecary of the Princess Margaretha, Charles the Fifth’s aunt, and several of his ancestors had been physicians of considerable distinction. At Louvain he received, in early youth, a thorough training in the Latin, Greek and Arabic languages and also in mathematics. When he was about eighteen years of age, he visited Montpellier and afterward Paris, at which latter city he received practical instruction in anatomy from the three men whose names I have mentioned in the preceding paragraph—viz., Guido Guidi, Jacques DuBois and Winther of Andernach. The instruction in anatomy given in Paris at that period (about 1533) consisted in interpretations of Galen’s teachings, in dissections of a few animals, and in occasional demonstrations—which never lasted longer than three days—of the easily accessible parts of a human cadaver. Scanty as were these sources of information, Vesalius cultivated them with the greatest zest. From time to time his teacher, DuBois, noting the interest which his pupil took in anatomy, and recognizing his fitness for imparting instruction, assigned to him the special duty of rehearsing, in the auditorium, before his fellow students, the essential facts of the day’s lecture. After war had been declared between the Emperor Charles the Fifth and Francis the First, King of France, Vesalius left Paris and returned to Louvain, where he began lecturing on anatomy. These lectures constituted the very first attempt at anything like systematic instruction in anatomy that is known to have been made at that ancient university. It was while he was engaged in this work that Vesalius, in order to become the possessor of an entire human skeleton,—a thing of which he felt a very great need,—ventured to remove from the gallows, outside the city, the cadaver of a criminal. This, as Haeser declares, was an act of great boldness and full of peril.
The life of a military surgeon attached to the army of Charles the Fifth, which was the life that Vesalius led during the following year or two, was not sufficiently attractive to divert his mind seriously from his favorite study; and it is therefore not surprising that we find him, at the age of twenty-three, accepting from the Senate at Venice the appointment of the professorship of anatomy at the University of Padua. When he entered upon this new work Vesalius felt considerable uncertainty as to the correctness of the anatomy which he was then teaching, and it is therefore easy to understand why his first three lectures were based entirely upon the teachings of Galen; but, before he had finished the third one of the series, he made up his mind that he would cut loose from the anatomy of the ape and confine himself to that of the human subject, as was then being revealed to him more and more perfectly from his own dissections. The stock of knowledge which he had thus begun to accumulate, increased steadily until, after seven years of teaching at Padua, Bologna and Pisa, at each of which schools of medicine he gave courses in anatomy of seven weeks’ duration, and after conducting the most painstaking dissections of a number of human cadavers, he finally declared that he was ready to publish his great treatise on anatomy. Some of his friends, foreseeing clearly what a storm of protest the new book would arouse among the followers of Galen, urged him to postpone for a time its publication; but a few others agreed with him that it should be issued without further delay. Accordingly Vesalius sent the manuscript of his work at once to the printers at Basel, and the book was finally published in June, 1543, before its author had attained his twenty-ninth year. Its title was “De corporis humani fabrica,” and it was provided with exceptionally fine pictorial illustrations, most of which were drawn, as is generally believed, by John de Calcar, one of Titian’s pupils. A second edition, superior in every respect to the first, was published in 1555. In comparison with this great work the few treatises written by Vesalius in later years are of minor importance.
Vesalius may rightly be considered the founder of modern anatomy, for he was the first to furnish correct information, based on actual dissections of the human cadaver, respecting quite a large number of the more important anatomical relations; and by this very act he won the further credit of having dealt the first effective blow toward the dethronement of Galen, the man who, next to Hippocrates,—probably even more than Hippocrates,—had exercised, by his teachings in nearly every department of medical science, almost despotic sway over physicians for considerably more than one thousand years. At this distance of time, it is hard to realize what a startling effect was produced by the announcement of the discovery of so many errors in Galen’s scheme of anatomy. Albert von Haller, the great authority on medical literature, speaks of Vesalius’ book as an “immortal work”; and, although its title would lead one to suppose that it deals only with the construction of the human body, an examination of its contents reveals the fact that it contains in addition quite full information regarding physiology and pathological anatomy, as well as many details relating to comparative anatomy. Perhaps the most marvelous thing about this book is the fact that its author completed his work before he had reached his twenty-eighth year. It may also interest the reader to learn that, prior to 1914, the University of Louvain possessed a copy of Vesalius’ great work printed on vellum and illustrated with many drawings in colors; but I am unable to say whether this beautiful volume did or did not escape destruction at the hands of the ruthless men who invaded Belgium during the summer of that memorable year.
FIG. 14. ANDREAS VESALIUS.
(After the portrait by Van Calcar in the Royal College of Surgeons, London.)
Copied from the reproduction published in the Nederlandsch Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde, Jan. 2, 1915.
When the human mind has adjusted itself, in the course of years, to consider certain beliefs and ideas as settled truths, it comes as a painful shock to be told that these beliefs are erroneous and that new ones must take their places. This is precisely what happened when Vesalius’ book was first published. From one end of Europe to the other there was a very great stir among the well-educated physicians; the more liberal-minded being ready to accept at once the genuineness of the new anatomy, whereas others,—and possibly they represented the larger number,—acting under the influence of personal jealousy or perhaps blinded by the belief that it was impious not to accept without questioning the descriptions made by Galen, were scandalized by the boldness of Vesalius in asserting that many of the statements made by this great medical authority were incorrect. Jacques DuBois, whose name has been mentioned by me on a previous page, was one of the most bitter of Vesalius’ assailants. In a pamphlet which he published in Paris in 1551 he even went so far as to speak of his late pupil as “a crazy fool who is poisoning the air of Europe with his vaporings.” On account of their former pleasant relations, and also because DuBois was at that time an old man, Vesalius made no reply to these attacks; but when Bartholomaeus Eustachius, Professor of Anatomy at Rome, one of the most celebrated anatomists of that period, and a man of his own age, entered the lists as the champion of Galen, Vesalius took up the challenge, left the work upon which he was then engaged, and began a tour of visits to the universities of Padua, Bologna and Pisa, for the express purpose of disproving, by the aid of numerous dissections, the statements made by his antagonists. Throughout this tour he was received everywhere with enthusiasm, the older men among the teachers of anatomy vying with the younger in manifesting the strength of their approval. The entire journey, says Haeser, was from beginning to end a series of the most brilliant triumphs. But, notwithstanding this vindication, which most men would have accepted with the greatest satisfaction, Vesalius returned to his home in Brussels only to find that the bitter attacks made by his enemies had not ceased. This depressed him greatly, for he was not philosophical enough to recognize the facts that jealousy was at the bottom of this ill feeling toward him, and also that sufficient time had not yet elapsed for the news of his triumphant vindication to travel from Italy to Belgium. While suffering from this fit of the blues he committed to the flames all his books and manuscripts. These latter, it appears, contained not only the fruits of many years of laborious anatomical and physiological research, but also a large number of memoranda relating to pathological anatomy.