Little is known of the way in which Vesalius taught surgery. The first year he was in Padua, he began with Avicenna’s treatise on tumors. According to the fragmentary notes in the college book of his ardent pupil, Vitus Tritonius, Vesalius compared Avicenna’s teachings with the classical works of Hippocrates, Galen, Paul of Aegina, and Aetius, explaining and correcting them.
INITIAL LETTER BY VESALIUS
(From the “Fabrica”, 1543)
CHAPTER EIGHTH
First Contribution to Anatomy
Like all great teachers, Vesalius was ever mindful of the interests of his students. Soon after accepting the chair of Anatomy in Padua, he articulated a human skeleton for use in his class room. His next work was the preparation of a set of anatomical plates, Tabulae Anatomicae, which were intended to pave the way to anatomy for beginners. For the further benefit of his class, he edited an edition of Guinterius’s Institutionuin Anatomicarum, which was issued in April, 1538.
Tabulae Anatomicae
The Tabulae Anatomicae were in the form of Fliegende Blätter, or loose leaves, and consisted of six plates which are now among the rarest of medical works. They bore the following title:
Tabulae Anatomicae. Imprimebat Venetiis B(ernardinus).
Vitalis Venetus sumptibus Joannis Stephani
Calcarensis Prostrant verò in officina
D. Bernardini. a. 1538.
In the preface Vesalius says that no one can learn either botany or anatomy from figures alone, but illustrations are a valuable means toward the imparting of knowledge. In publishing these plates he hopes to benefit those persons who had attended his public dissections. Not a line in these pictures is unnatural; all has been reproduced just as he had shown in his demonstrations. He gives due credit to van Calcar, the artist who made the drawings of the three skeletons. The other pictures were made by the author himself.