Andreas Vesalius
From Philosopedia
Vesalius, Andreas (1514–1564)
A Flemish anatomist, Vesalius made many discoveries by dissecting human cadavers. His work overturned many of the doctrines held by the second-century anatomist Galen and caused much criticism from other anatomists who objected to his stealing the bodies of criminals from the gallows.
He countered that it was the only way, in light of the Church’s teachings, to obtain cadavers. His work was revolutionary inasmuch as he was among the first to dissect cadavers. This allowed him to show that Galen’s anatomy was simply an attempt to apply animal structure to the human body, that it was not based on any direct knowledge of human anatomy.
Chased from country to country, he left Padua to become physician to Emperor Charles V and to his son Philip II of Spain.
Joseph McCabe wrote, “There is a grossly inaccurate account of him in the Catholic Dr. Walsh’s Popes and Science—the account in Andrew White’s Warfare of Science with Theology is perfectly correct—and the very just appreciation of him by the Vice-President of the Anatomical Society of Great Britain in the Encyclopedia Britannica has been expunged from the last (Catholic-revised) edition, though he was one of the greatest scientists of the Middle Ages.”
In 1563, Vesalius made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and, on the return voyage, died in Greece. Throughout his life he incurred the hostility of the clergy, and he died carrying out a sentence of the Spanish Inquisition, which had sought to burn him at the stake. The Emperor saved him, but on condition that he make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The hardships of a shipwreck hastened the end of Vesalius’s broken life.
