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Andrea Vesalius (1514-1564) was born in the Brussels of the Spanish Empire, where her father was the emperor's apothecary. He studied in his hometown and in Leuven, Montpellier and Paris.
He served as a surgeon in the French army until 1537, when he moved to Padua, where he taught anatomy. In 1543, he published his famous anatomy treatise De humani corporis fabrica (On the structure of the human body) for which he was recognized throughout Europe.
After that he served as doctor to the court of Charles V and Philip II of Spain. He died in 1564 when the ship on which he was returning to Padua to take up the professorship of anatomy was shipwrecked on the Greek island of Zante.
He lived for many years in Spain, hence his name in Spanish. His original name was Andries Wytinck van Wesel. Anatomist, biologist, doctor, surgeon, university professor, physiologist and writer.
Recognized by historians of medical science as the founder of modern anatomy, hand in hand with his revolutionary personal praxis, captured textually and graphically in his masterpiece De humani corporis fabrica, one of the most beautiful printed books of all time by Johann Oporinus.
In December 1537, one day after his graduation, he performed his first public dissection of a corpse in Padua, explaining both the composition of the organs and the technique used. The Venetian Senate, impressed, immediately awarded him the Chair of Anatomy and Surgery at the University of Padua.
At that time, in addition to educated doctors trained at the university, there were apothecaries and barber surgeons who carried out artisanal work.
Physicians, who communicated in Latin, prescribed medicines prepared by apothecaries and sometimes supervised operations performed by barber surgeons.
Vesalius, based on his own observations, made corrections to the classical texts and, based on this, created his own work. He made dissection the most important part of the class.
For him, direct observation was the only reliable source, which represented an important break with medieval practice, based fundamentally on classical texts.
Vesalius made anatomy drawings and prepared illustrated anatomical tables for use by his students, which he published in 1538. Also an updated version of Galen's anatomical vademecum, Institutiones anatomicae, and a work on phlebotomy or bloodletting, which at that time was applied to many diseases.
In 1539, a judge from Padua, interested in the works of Vesalius, had the corpses of executed criminals provided to him for dissection. He based his anatomical studies on direct observation so he was able to observe and reject anatomical errors present in Galen's work that he experimented with on animals.
Vesalius believed that medical students should perform dissections and draw their own conclusions from direct study with the human body. For this reason he included in his treatise precise instructions on how to perform the dissections.
It is made up of seven books. The illustrations accompanying the treatise were praised and imitated during the following centuries. Other artists who are currently known as "Tiziano's workshop" participated in its preparation, among whom Jan Stefan van Calcar stood out.
In addition to making the first valid description of the sphenoid, he demonstrated that the sternum consists of three parts and the sacrum of five; and he carefully described the vestibule inside the temporal bone.
He described the azygos vein and discovered in the fetus the channel that connects the umbilical vein and the inferior vena cava, since then called ductus venosus.
He also described the omentum and its connections with the stomach, spleen and colon; he offered the first correct notions about the structure of the pylorus; he observed the small size of the vermiform appendix in men; he gave the first valid descriptions of the mediastinum and pleura and the most correct explanation of the anatomy of the brain known to date.
One of Vesalius's most important achievements is to have fundamentally reformed the teaching of anatomy. His teaching style differed substantially from that followed in Paris and the main European universities.
His extraordinary aptitude for drawing, the direct teaching of anatomy, not only through verbal explanation, but with the scalpel in his own hand, gave his anatomical lessons a style so different from that established until then that he gathered in his Paduan amphitheater to multitude of attendees.
He proposed anatomical knowledge that should be obtained only through the dissection of the human body and not through the study of traditional texts.
When Andrea Vesalius published De humani corporis fabrica libri septem in 1543, he achieved one of the most beautiful scientific books of all time. A considerable part of that merit falls on the printer,
The excellent typography of Johann Oporinus (1507-1568) contributes to the merit of the book. He highlights its impeccable layout, the beauty of the type, the cleanliness of the printing, the intensity of the ink, the parallelism between the lines, the quality of the paper and the originality of the historicized initial letters. The quality of the woodcut illustrations is extraordinary, as is the beautiful frontispiece.
Oporinus was a professor of Latin and Greek, a doctor and a pressman in Johann Froben's printing press, the most important in Basel in the 16th century. His manuscript collection and extensive correspondence are preserved in the Basel University Library.
