Define andreas vesalius biography
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Andreas Vesalius ()
c, Andreas Vesalius, Flemish anatomist and doctor ©Vesalius was a Flemish-born anatomist whose dissections of the human body helped to correct misconceptions dating from ancient times.
Andreas Vesalius was born on 31 December in Brussels, Belgium, then part of the Holy Roman Empire. He came from a family of physicians and both his father and grandfather had served the holy Roman emperor. Vesalius studied medicine in Paris but was forced to leave before completing his degree when the Holy Roman Empire declared war on France. He then studied at the University of Louvain, and then moved to Padua to study for his doctorate. Upon completion in he was immediately offered the chair of surgery and anatomy.
Surgery and anatomy were then considered of little importance in comparison to the other branches of medicine. However, Vesalius believed that surgery had to be grounded in anatomy. Unusually, he always performed dissections himself and produced anatomical c
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Understanding Evolution
At the dawn of the sixteenth century, europeisk scholars could gain only a crude understanding of the anatomy of humans and animals. At the handful of universities where students trained in medicine—such as Bologna or Paris—professors read from the books of the Greek physician Galen. Galen had combined the philosophical work of Aristotle and other Greeks with his own lifetime of dissections, creating a system that explained not just the structure of the human body, but how the body worked.
After the fall of Rome, Galen’s legacy lived on in Arab cities like Baghdad, where his work was translated, pored over, and encrusted with interpretations and commentaries. In the s, Europeans began to translate Galen from Arabic and made his work the grund of medical training. But in the many steps of translation, much of the spirit of Galen’s work—especially his emphasis on observing for oneself rather than relying on authority—was lost. A tradition had emerged in whic
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Andreas Vesalius was an ambitious young man who was not shy of self-publicity. Born in Flanders years ago, he had his eye on one of the most prestigious roles in medicine. He sought an appointment as personal physician to the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. To optimise his chances, Vesalius set out to demonstrate his extensive knowledge of the workings of the human body. One of the ways he did this was to publish in an extraordinary tome known as the Fabrica, in reference to its Latin title which translates as ‘Seven books on the fabric of the human body’.
Vesalius dedicated the Fabrica to Charles V and presented the Emperor with a copy of what must be the ultimate CV. “Vesalius was only 28 when he produced the Fabrica and its companion piece the Epitome. He was already an accomplished physician and anatomist. He’d made a name for himself and developed connections all over Europe. His portrayal of himself in his books suggests that he was supremely confident of his abilitie