Vesalius, Andreas (1514-1564)

Belgian physician who revolutionized anatomy by performing postmortem dissections and making use of illustrations to teach anatomy. Vesalius upset the authority of Galen, and his book - the first real textbook of anatomy - marked the beginning of biology as a science.

Vesalius was taught anatomy in the Galenist tradition. Galen had never dissected a human body - all his accounts of the human anatomy were based on his research of the Barbary ape - although he was regarded as infallible and was venerated until the Renaissance. Vesalius was therefore taught principles of anatomy that had not been questioned for 1,300 years.

Dissatisfied with the instruction he had received, Vesalius resolved to make his own observations. His dissections of the human body (then illegal) enabled him to discover that Galen's system of medicine was based on fundamental anatomical errors. Vesalius disproved the widely held belief that men had one rib less than women. He also believed, contrary to Aristotle's theory of the heart being the centre of the mind and emotion, that the brain and the nervous system were the centre.

Vesalius's book De humani corporis fabrica/On the Structure of the Human Body of 1543 employed talented artists to provide the illustrations and is one of the great books of the 16th century. The quality of anatomical depiction introduced a new standard into all illustrated works, especially into medical books, and highlighted the need to introduce scientific method into the study of anatomy. Together with the main work of astronomer Copernicus, published in the same year, On the Structure of the Human Body marked the dawn of modern science.

Vesalius was born in Brussels and studied at Louvain, Paris, and Padua in Italy, where he was professor 1537-42. He became court physician to Charles V, and later to his son Philip II of Spain. On his way back from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Vesalius died in a shipwreck off Greece.