In , he left for a trip to the Holy Land but died on 15 October on the Greek island of Zakynthos during the journey home.
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This page has been archived and is no longer updated. Find out more about page archiving. World War One Centenary. This three-fold scheme of doctoring was equally familiar to the doctors of each sect. The doctors themselves accommodated their own hands to curing in accordance with the nature of the affections; and they expended no less energy in training their hands than in the business of arranging the diet or of knowing and compounding drugs.
For instance, over and above his other books, the volumes which the divine Hippocrates wrote on the Role of the Doctor , on the Fractures of Bones , on the Dislocations of Joints , and evils of this type—the best written of all his works—show this clearly. Indeed, Galen, that prince of medicine after Hippocrates, in addition to boasting frequently that the care of the Pergamene gladiators had been entrusted to him alone, and to being unwilling, although his years were heavy upon him, that the apes which were to be dissected by himself should be skinned by the labor of his servants, frequently impresses upon [his readers] how much he delighted in the craft of the hand, and how zealously he and the other doctors of Asia practiced it.
But no one of the ancients seems to have handed down to posterity with equal care the curing which is wrought by the hand and that which is accomplished by diet and medicines. After the devastation of the Goths particularly, when all the sciences, which had previously been so flourishing and had been properly practiced, went to the dogs, the more elegant doctors at first in Italy in imitation of the ancient Romans began to be ashamed of working with their hands, and began to prescribe to their servants what operations they should perform upon the sick, and they merely stood alongside after the fashion of architects.
When, soon, others also began to refuse the inconveniences of those practicing true medicine, meanwhile subtracting nothing from their profit and honor, they promptly fell away from the standards of the early doctors. They left the manner of cooking, and in fact the whole preparation, of the diet for the sick, to their attendants, and they left the composition of drugs to.
And so in the course of time the technique of curing was so wretchedly torn apart that the doctors, prostituting themselves under the names of "Physicians," appropriated to themselves simply the prescription of drugs and diets for unusual affections; but the rest of medicine they relegated to those whom they call "Chirugians" and deem as if they were servants. They shamefully reject that which is the principal and the most ancient branch of medicine, the one which rests primarily upon the observation of nature if indeed it is anything else!
Yet this branch of medicine even the kings in India practice today; and by the law of heredity in Persia they pass it all on to their children, as once the families of the Asclepiades did.
The Thracians, along with many other peoples cultivate and venerate it. Although this art accomplishes absolutely nothing without the help of nature, but rather desires to aid her as she works to free herself from disease; when a part of the art, which the Romans in times past have proscribed from the state as if designed to deceive and destroy men, has been almost wholly neglected, the result is that the utility of the art as a whole is removed and destroyed.
To this primarily we owe the fact that this most sacred art is ridiculed, although many censures are normally cast at doctors anyway, since that part of the art which those educated in the liberal arts have shamefully allowed to be torn away is the part which permanently illuminates medicine with its especial glory.
When Homer, the fount of talents, affirms that the medical man is more preeminent than many, and when he and the other Greek poets celebrate Podalirius and Machaon, these sons of the divine Aesculapius are not lauded because they did away with a little fever which Nature alone cures more easily without the aid of a doctor than when the aid is applied or because they humored the palate of men in peculiar and lamentable affections.
They were celebrated because they were especially pre-eminent in the cure of haemorrhages, dislocations, fractures, contusions, wounds, and the other breaks in the continuity of the body. They freed the most noble soldiers of Agamemnon from arrow points, javelins, and other evils of this sort which are principally caused by wars and which demand the careful attention of the doctor.
But, Most August Caesar, Charles, I have in no manner proposed to exalt any one instrument of medicine above the others, since the aforesaid three-fold method of help absolutely can not be disjoined and taken apart. The whole method belongs to one workman.
To effect this synthesis properly, all the parts of medicine should be constituted and prepared equally so that all the individual elements can be put to use more advantageously, and each element in turn unites all together more perfectly. Now and then an extremely rare disease does turn up which does not immediately require the three-fold instrument of the safeguards. And so a fitting plan of diet should be instituted, and finally something must be attempted by medicines and then by surgery.
Therefore tyros in the art should be encouraged in all the methods, and, if it please the gods, scorning the whisperings of the "physicians," they should apply their hands likewise to curing in whatever manner the nature of the art and reason really demand, as the Greeks did. This they should do lest they turn mutilated medicine to the destruction of the common life of man. And they must be encouraged in this. They are afraid that they will be traduced by the fanatics of the medical profession before the unlettered populace as "barbers.
This detestable opinion of many people in the first place keeps us from taking up the whole craft of healing; and we arrogate to ourselves only the cure of internal affections, we desire to be doctors only in a small way to tell the truth for once! The ensuing damage to mortals is great. Indeed, when all the compounding of drugs was relegated to the pharmacists, the doctors in turn soon lost completely the knowledge of the simple drugs that were necessary to them.
The shops were filled with barbarous labels and crooked pharmacists. Furthermore, this most perverse surrender of the instruments of healing to various artificers, has brought a much more execrable disaster and far more frightful calamity upon an outstanding part of natural philosophy. To anatomical study, Hippocrates and Plato gave a high rank, since it embraces the study of man and since it correctly must be considered the solidest foundation of the medical art and the beginning of the constitution.
They did not doubt that it should be included in the first parts of medicine. When this subject used to be practiced exclusively by the doctors, they stretched every nerve to master it. But when they surrendered the surgical work to others and forgot their anatomical knowledge, it ultimately began to collapse.
As long as the doctors thought that only the curing of internal affections belonged to them, they considered that the mere knowledge of the viscera was abundantly sufficient. They neglected the fabric of bones, muscles, nerves, veins and of the arteries which creep through the bones and muscles, as being of no concern of theirs. When the whole business was committed to the barbers, not only did the true knowledge of the viscera disappear from among the doctors, but also their activity in dissecting straightway died.
This went so far that the doctors did not even attempt cutting; but those barbers, to whom the craft of surgery was delegated, were too unlearned to understand the writings of the professors of dissection. It is far from the truth that this group of men preserved for us this most difficult art, transmitted manually to them; but it is true that this deplorable dispersion of the curative role brought a detestable procedure into our Gymnasiums, wherein some were accustomed to administer the cutting of the human body while others narrated the history of the parts.
The latter, indeed, from a lofty chair arrogantly cackle like jackdaws about things which they never have tried, but which they commit to memory from the books of others or which they place in written form before their eyes. The former, however, are so unskilled in languages that they cannot explain the dissections to the spectators. They merely chop up the things which are to be shown on the instructions of the physician, who, having never put his hand to cutting, simply steers the boat from the commentary—and not without arrogance.
And thus all things are taught wrongly, and days go by in silly disputations. Fewer facts are placed before the spectators in. I shall not mention those schools where they hardly ever think of dissecting the structure of the human body, with the result that ancient medicine declined from its pristine glory years ago.
When at length in the great happiness of this age, which the gods have willed to be ruled by Your power, medicine had begun to revive along with all the studies, and had begun to lift up its head from the profoundest darkness so that it almost seems to have recovered its old splendor in some Academies; and since medicine now needs nothing more acutely than the dead knowledge of the parts of the human body, I decided to go to work on this book with whatever strength and brains I had, and with the encouragement of the example of so many distinguished men.
For fear that I alone might go slack at a time when all men are, with great success, essaying something for the sake of the common studies, or even for fear that I might fall away from the standards set by my progenitors, who were by no means obscure doctors, I thought that this branch of natural philosophy should be called back from the depths, so that, even if it should not be more complete among us than among the early doctors of dissection, nevertheless it should some day reach a point where one would not be ashamed to state that our method of dissection compares favorably with the ancient.
And one might say that nothing had been so broken down by time, and then so quickly restored, as anatomy. But this ambition of mine would never have succeeded if, when I was studying medicine at Paris, I myself had not applied my hand to this business, and incidentally had the pleasure of being present at several public dissections put on by certain barbers for my colleagues and me when some viscera were superficially shown.
At that time, when we first saw the prosperous re-birth of medicine, anatomy was given rather perfunctory treatment there. When some dissections of animals were being performed under the direction of that celebrated and most praiseworthy gentleman, Jacobus Sylvius, I was encouraged by colleagues and preceptors, although I had been trained only by my own efforts, to perform in public the third dissection at which I ever happened to be present—a dissection which dealt purely and simply with the viscera as was the custom there and I did it more thoroughly than was usual.
Moreover, when I next attacked a dissection, I attempted to show the muscles of the hand along with the more accurate dissection of the viscera. For, aside from the eight muscles of the abdomen, badly mangled and in the wrong order, no one had ever shown a muscle to me, nor any bone, much less the succession of nerves, veins, and arteries.
Why, hardly half of his own anatomical books have been saved from destruction! But those who have followed Galen, in which class I consider Oribasius, Theophilus, the Arabs, and all of our men however many I have chanced to read thus far with your permission I would have written of these , if they handed down anything worth reading, they took it straight from Galen.
And, by heaven, to the man who is diligently dissecting they seem to have done nothing less than the dissection of the human body! And so, with their teeth set, the principal followers of Galen put their trust in some kind of talking, and relying upon the inertia of others in dissecting, they shamelessly abridge Galen into elaborate compendia.
The whole lot of them have placed their faith in him, with the result that you cannot find a doctor who has thought that even the slightest slip has ever been detected in the anatomical volumes of Galen, much less could be found now. The 18 months that followed confirmed his anatomical reputation. He published the Tabulae anatomicae sex , six anatomical plates drawn by painter and woodcutter Jan van Calcar as an aid for students.
At the age of 24, Vesalius was bold enough to free himself of the traditional methods of Galen and his followers, and held the belief that the study of human anatomy should be based on visible proof gained from dissecting human bodies. He probably started writing in and was almost finished by the summer of Vesalius benefited from the intellectual climate in Padua and Venice and made use of the time to concentrate on this publication. In autumn , the illustrated woodcuts of the book were transported to Basel, Switzerland, where it was printed by Johannes Oporinus — who was gaining fame for the quality of his printing.
Vesalius even obtained privileges that protected the Fabrica from unauthorized copying. It is not clear why he published his work in Basel: even though the city was an important center of printing during the Renaissance, Vesalius would have found excellent printers in Venice as well, without having to transport the woodcuts. In January , Vesalius arrived in Basel to oversee the printing of his magnum opus, but did not neglect his core skill as an anatomist: during his stay, he dissected the body of an executed criminal; the skeleton can still be seen at the Anatomical Museum of the University of Basel.
He also prepared Andreae Vesalii suorum de humani corporis fabrica librorum epitome , a condensed summary of his works for students consisting of six chapters and nine illustrations.
The illustrations in the original Fabrica were lavish, but not in color. However, a most beautiful, richly hand colored and expensive copy of the Fabrica was prepared for Charles V. The Emperor was pleased with the book, which featured a florid dedication to him, and appointed Vesalius to his medical staff.
Vesalius believed that while working at the court he would not have enough opportunity to continue his working and writing on anatomy. Although he — and Vesalius scholars to come — came to regret it, he disposed of most of his library and destroyed his notes on Galen. In late , before Vesalius started to work for Charles V, he made another trip to Italy. About people attended a lecture he gave in Padua, a sure sign of his success.
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