Belgian physician Vesalius created human anatomy
Andrea Vesalius
André Vesalius (1514-1564) was a famous physician and anatomist, the founder of modern human anatomy, Vesalius and Copernicus, one of the two representatives of the scientific revolution.
1. Biography
Vesalius was born on 31 December 1514 in Brussels into a family of medicine. His great-grandfather, grandfather, and father were all court physicians, and the family had a large collection of books on medicine. Vesalius loved reading these books as a child, and from them he was inspired by many things and set his heart to become a doctor.
In 1528, Vesalius entered the University of Leuven to study fine arts, but when his father was appointed personal attendant in 1532, he decided to enter the University of Paris in 1533 to study medicine. There, he studied Galen's theories of medicine under the guidance of Jacques Dubois and Jean Fenel. From then on, he became interested in anatomy and often studied bones at the Holy Infant Cemetery in Paris.
Vesalius was forced to leave Paris and return to Leuven in 1536 when relations between France and the Holy Roman Empire were strained. At Leuven, he completed his studies under the tutelage of Johannes Winter von Andernach and graduated the following year. Because of an argument with his professors, after graduation he remained in Leuven for only a short time. After a brief move to Venice in 1536, he enrolled in the University of Padua, where he received his doctorate in 1537.
After graduation, he stayed in Padua to teach surgery and anatomy. Proficient in the writings of the ancient Roman physician Galen, but he was not limited to book knowledge, believing that it was necessary to personally dissect and observe the human body, creating a vivid teaching situation of theoretical integration with practice, which was rare at that time, and was respected and loved by students.
Vesalius is dissecting the human body
Vesalius, like Nicolaus Copernicus, was persecuted by the Church in defense of scientific truth. But the anatomy he established opened the way for the discovery of blood circulation and became a monument to his memory.
Second, the main achievements
But Vesalius did it differently. He used anatomical tools to demonstrate the operation himself, while students gathered around the table to observe the learning. Face-to-face hands-on teaching was considered the only reliable way of teaching and a major breakthrough in medieval practice.
Vesalius' main contribution was published in 1543 in the book Anatomy of the Human Body, which summarized the achievements of anatomy at the time and is considered the founder of modern human anatomy. Although Vesalius was not the first to perform an actual autopsy, his highly detailed and elaborate prints are still considered classics even today. When the book "Construction" was published, Vesalius was only 30 years old.
Anatomical drawings from Vesalius's Book of Constructs
In addition to the first correct description of the sphenoid bone, he also showed that the sternum consists of three parts, and the sacrum is composed of five or six pieces; The vestibule is correctly described as located inside the temporal bone. He not only confirmed that Etienne's observations about pulmonary venous valves were correct, describing odd veins, but also found the fetus's tube between the umbilical vein and the vena cava, which was named intravenous catheter. Vesalius also describes the omentum and its connection to the stomach, as well as the spleen and colon; The first correctly given structure of the pylorus; The size of the male appendix was observed; For the first time, the mediastinum and pleura were correctly described, along with the most comprehensive anatomical description of the brain at the time. He can't understand the crypt, and his description of the nerves is vague, such as the optic nerve as the first pair, the third pair as the fifth pair, and the fifth pair as the seventh pair.
In this book, Vesalius was also the first to describe artificial respiration.
Third, uncover the mystery
Vesalius often sneaked out of the school with a few better classmates on a cold winter night and came to the suburban graveyard to steal the bones; Or on a midsummer night, sneak under the gallows and steal the body of a criminal. Ignoring the cold of the harsh winter, the heat of the summer, and the stench of rotting corpses, he put aside the danger of being caught and killed, and worked hard only to seek the truth. Concentrate on selecting the useful materials in it, and for every bone you get, it is like a treasure, carefully wrapped and brought back to school. When he returned, he secretly studied and studied all night in the faint candlelight until he understood. It is with this spirit of not being afraid of difficulties, not afraid of sacrifice and superhuman perseverance that Vesalius persisted in his work for a long time, and finally mastered exquisite and skilled anatomical techniques and precious and reliable first-hand materials.
IV. The Struggle for Truth
This materialist method of governance and anatomical achievements of Vesalius violated the old conventional wisdoms, attacked the stereotypes of the school, and aroused hatred and attacks from the conservatives. The school authorities not only did not approve of his degree, but also expelled him from school. Since then, Vesalius has been forced to leave Paris.
Later, he had the opportunity to teach at the University of Padua of the Republic of Venice, where he received his doctorate on December 6, 1537. During his teaching, Vesalius continued to use lectures to perform autopsies and to teach vivisection, attracting a large number of students. There, he took advantage of the school's favorable conditions and continued his anatomical research.
In his spare time, Vesalius began writing a long-planned monograph on human anatomy. After five years of hard work, in 1543, at the age of 28, Vesalius finally completed the monumental work "Human Organs", which was described by several major systems such as bones, tendons, and nerves. In this great work, Vesalius broke through the anatomical theory speculated by the old authorities represented by Galen, and accurately described the structure of the human body with a large number and rich anatomical practice data. In his book, he wrote that anatomy should study living, not dead, structures. All organs, bones, muscles, blood vessels and nerves of the human body are closely interrelated, and each part is a dynamic organizational unit. The publication of this work clarified the errors of the Galen school's subjective speculation, and thus put anatomy on the right track. It can be said that the book "Human Organs" is an important symbol of the establishment of scientific anatomy.
Vesalius's spirit of pragmatism and truth-seeking and the publication of his book shocked anatomists and doctors of the time. Among them, there are also some ill-intentioned people who strongly oppose Vesalius's views, confusing the human body with the corpse of a dog, and the successors of Galen, who caused great mistakes, attacked Vesalius even more wildly. Even his former teacher, Silvay, called him "crazy." The censors of the religious books and newspapers scrutinized his anatomical writings so closely and attacked Vesalius with absurd so-called "grounds." The "basis" is that a man should have one less rib than a woman, because the Bible says that God commanded Adam to take out one rib and become Eve. And what nonsense: everyone has an unbreakable resurrection bone, and the resurrection bone is the core of the resurrection of the body.
Vesalius says in the book that the human femur is straight, not curved like a dog's. But they insisted on saying in front of the facts: the human body structure has changed since the Time of Galen, and the reason why people see that people's leg bones are straight rather than curved is because contemporary people wear tight leg narrow pants to straighten the leg bones. If it is not an artificial result, the human leg should still be bent in the natural state. This ridiculous justification turned out to be the ground for persecuting Vesalius.
V. Persecution of the Church
Vesalius had to leave Padua in 1544, the year after the publication of The Anatomy of the Human Body. After leaving Padua, Vesalius came to Spain and served as the imperial physician of King Charles V, interrupting the study of anatomy. In Spain, he spent twenty years in peace.
Still, the church's clutches refused to spare him. Once, he performed an autopsy for a Spanish nobleman, and when the chest was cut open, the watchman said that his heart was still beating, and used this as an excuse to frame Vesalius for performing an autopsy with a living person. The Inquisition took the opportunity to prosecute and finally sentenced Vesalius to death. The case was closed by the intervention of King Phiripu and the sentence of pilgrimage to Jerusalem. But on the way back, the ship was in distress, and Vesalius, who was only 50 years old, died. André Vesalli, the founder of human anatomy, thus tragically ended the great life of a scientist.