CH. IX. VESALIUS AND GALEN. 67 



had described the structure of man's body very imperfectly, 

 because he had only been allowed to dissect animals. 



Andreas Vesalius was born at Brussels in 15 14. When 

 he was quite a boy he had a passionate love for anatomy, 

 and, as he had some little fortune, he gave up all his time to 

 this study, and often ran great risks in order to get bodies to 

 dissect ; for in those days it was still considered wicked to 

 cut up dead bodies. In the year 1540 he became Professor 

 of Anatomy at the University of Padua, in Northern Italy, 

 and two years afterwards, when he was only twenty-eight 

 years of age, he published his ' Great Anatomy,' in which 

 Human Anato?ny^ or the structure of man's body, was care- 

 fully studied and described ; the different parts being illus- 

 trated by the most beautiful and accurate wood engravings, 

 drawn by the best Italian artists. 



In this book Vesalius pointed out that Galen, having 

 learnt his anatomy from the bodies of animals, had described 

 incorrectly almost all the bones which are peculiar to man. 

 For example, in animals the middle part of the upper jaw, 

 which holds the front and eye-teeth, is a separate bone from 

 the sides of the jaw, and even in monkeys it remains sepa- 

 rate while they are young ; but man is born with the upper 

 jaw all joined into one solid piece. Now Galen had de- 

 scribed man's upper jaw as composed of separate bones, and 

 therefore it was clear that he had made his description from 

 the skull of an animal. In all instances like this, and there 

 are many, in which man differs from animals, Vesalius 

 showed that it was necessary to examine the human skele- 

 ton, and not to trust merely to Galen's teaching. 



This was a great step in science, and yet people had 

 become so accustomed to follow authority blindly that 

 Vesalius made many enemies by venturing to think that 



