Vesalius Quotes

It’s no coincidence that the man who contributed the most to the study of human anatomy, the Belgian Andreas Vesalius, was an avid proponent of do-it-yourself, get-your-fussy-Renaissance-shirt-dirty anatomical dissection.

… our 'Physick' and 'Anatomy' have embraced such infinite varieties of being, have laid open such new worlds in time and space, have grappled, not unsuccessfully, with such complex problems, that the eyes of Vesalius and of Harvey might be dazzled by the sight of the tree that has grown out of their grain of mustard seed.

For it was beautiful upon our tongues and we traced all the lines to the heart.

I am not accustomed to saying anything with certainty after only one or two observations.

The question then becomes, was it necessary, once the likes of Vesalius had pretty much figured out the basics, for every student of anatomy to get right in there and figure them out all over again? Why couldn’t models and preserved prosections be used to teach anatomy? Do gross anatomy labs reinvent the wheel? The questions were especially relevant in Knox’s day, given the way in which bodies were procured, but they are still relevant today.

six books that mean the world to her: On the Fabric of the Human Body by Andreas Vesalius, Physica by Aristotle, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy by Isaac Newton, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, and two novels—Camus’s The Stranger, and Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.

It’s no coincidence that the man who contributed the most to the study of human anatomy, the Belgian Andreas Vesalius, was an avid proponent of do-it-yourself, get-your-fussy-Renaissance-shirt-dirty anatomical dissection. Though human dissection was an accepted practice in the Renaissance-era anatomy class, most professors shied away from personally undertaking it, preferring to deliver their lectures while seated in raised chairs a safe and tidy remove from the corpse and pointing out structures with a wooden stick while a hired hand did the slicing. Vesalius disapproved of this practice, and wasn’t shy about his feelings. In C. D. O’Malley’s biography of the man, Vesalius likens the lecturers to “jackdaws aloft in their high chair, with egregious arrogance croaking things they have never investigated but merely committed to memory from the books of others. Thus everything is wrongly taught,…and days are wasted in ridiculous questions.

The word polymath, derived from the Greek words meaning “to know much” or “very knowing,” has come to mean in common parlance a person of encyclopedic learning. Polymaths are not to be confused with dilettantes, who take up new subjects for amusement or pleasure. Polymaths master their activities to a significant degree and perceive the fundamental connections between them. The greatest polymaths of all, like the “Renaissance men” Leonardo da Vinci, Vesalius, and Michelangelo, seem capable of encompassing all that is known. Of course, no one has ever had truly encyclopedic knowledge, and that is not what we are calling for here. But it has long been observed by psychologists that people who are innovative tend to participate in a wider range of activities and develop a higher degree of skill in those activities than other people. Certainly that has been the case for virtually every artist, scientist, inventor, and humanist discussed in these pages, nearly all of whom can be called polymaths.

just the number three. And yet that year the first chapters of Copernicus’s De revolutionibus orbium coelestium and the entirety of De humani corporis fabrica by Vesalius appeared.

Cardano’s great book on mathematics, Ars Magna (The Great Art), appeared in 1545, at the same time Copernicus was publishing his discoveries of the planetary system and Vesalius was producing his treatise on anatomy. The book was published just five years after the first appearance of the symbols “+” and “−” in Grounde of Artes by an Englishman named Robert Record. Seventeen years later, an English book called Whetstone of Witte introduced the symbol “=” because “noe 2 thynges can be more equalle than a pair of paralleles.”8 Ars Magna was the first major work of the Renaissance to concentrate on algebra.

mean the world to her: On the Fabric of the Human Body by Andreas Vesalius, Physica by Aristotle, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy by Isaac Newton, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, and two novels—Camus’s The Stranger, and Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. At the bank, she closes her savings

On the Fabric of the Human Body by Andreas Vesalius, Physica by Aristotle, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy by Isaac Newton, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, and two novels—Camus’s The Stranger, and Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.

The doctors did not even attempt cutting,” Vesalius wrote bitterly, “but those barbers, to whom the craft of surgery was delegated, were too unlearned to understand the writings of the professors of dissection…. 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.

The apothecary holds out a large volume with the title ‘De Defabrica’. Taking the book, the painter runs his fingers across the leather cover, then lifts it open. “Where did you find it?” “When? Last week. It’s the first anatomy book since Vesalius, written by Adriaen van den Spieghel.” “No, where?” As the painter flips open the thick pages, he finds many illustrations and detailed fragments of body parts he has never even heard of before. “I have many sources, young man.” On hearing a bell – a customer has arrived – he advances towards the door. “Look it over, but be sure to return it.