6 Vesalius: [lect. 



and Galen and authority reigned supreme in anatomical 

 teaching and thought. He was however the last of his school ; 

 his teaching was swept away by the new learning embodied in 

 the Fabrica Humani Corporis of Andreas Vesalius. 



Who then was this Andreas Vesalius ? 



He was born at Brussels at midnight as the last day of 1514 

 was passing into the first of 1515. His family, which had dwelt 

 for several generations at Nymwegen and which originally bore 

 the name of Witing, had produced many doctors and learned 

 men, and his father was apothecary to Charles V. His mother, 

 to judge by her maiden name, Isabella Crabbe, was probably of 

 English extraction. 



The young Vesalius (or Wesalius, for so it was sometimes 

 spelt) was sent to school at Lou vain and afterwards entered 

 the University there, which then as later was of great renown. 

 Though he diligently pursued the ordinary classical and 

 rhetorical studies of the place, the bent of his mind early 

 shewed itself; while yet a boy he began to dissect such 

 animals as he could lay his hands on. Such a boy could 

 not do otherwise than study medicine, and in 1533, a lad 

 of seventeen or eighteen, he went to Paris to sit at the feet of 

 Sylvius, then rising into fame. 



The ardent young Belgian was however no docile hearer, 

 receiving open mouthed whatever fell from the master. Sylvius' 

 teaching was as I have said in the main the reading in public 

 of Galen. From time to time however the body of a dog or at 

 rarer intervals the corpse of some patient was brought into the 

 lecture room, and barber servants dissected in a rough, clumsy 

 way and exposed to the view of the student the structures which 

 the learned doctor, who himself disdained such menial, loathsome 

 work, bid them shew. This did not satisfy Vesalius. At the 

 third dissection at which he was present he, already well versed 

 in the anatomy of the dog, irritated beyond control at the rude 

 handling of the ignorant barbers, pus lung them on one side, 

 completed the dissection in the way he knew it ought to be 

 done. 



"My study of anatomy," says he, "would never have succeeded 

 " had I when working at medicine at Paris been willing that 



