Vesalius, Andreas

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Vesalius, Andreas (1514-1564), Belgian anatomist and physician, whose dissections of the human body and description of his findings helped to correct misconceptions prevailing since ancient times and to lay the foundations of the modern science of anatomy.

Vesalius was born in Brussels. The son of a celebrated apothecary, he attended the University of Leuven and later the University of Paris, where he studied from 1533 to 1536. At the University of Paris he studied medicine and showed a special interest in anatomy. Through further study at the University of Padua in 1537, Vesalius obtained his medical degree and an appointment as a lecturer on surgery. During his continuing research, Vesalius showed that the anatomical teachings from antiquity of the Greco-Roman physician Galen, then revered in medical schools, were based on dissections of animals, even though they were intended to provide a guide to the structure of the human body.

Vesalius went on to write an elaborate anatomical work, De Humani Corporis Fabrica (On the Structure of the Human Body, 7 volumes, 1543), which was based on his own dissections of human cadavers. The volumes were richly and carefully illustrated, with many of the fine engravings rendered by Jan van Calcar, a pupil of Titian. The most accurate and comprehensive anatomical textbook to that date, it aroused heated dispute but helped lead to Vesalius's appointment as physician in the imperial household of Charles V, Holy Roman emperor. After Charles abdicated, his son, Philip II, appointed Vesalius one of his physicians in 1559. After several years at the imperial court in Madrid, Vesalius made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. On the voyage home in 1564, he died in a shipwreck off the island of Zacynthus.

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