Andreas Vesalius was a
Brussels-born
anatomist of the early-to-mid 1500s. He revolutionized
medicine by being among the first of his profession to put to the test the then-1500 year-old anatomical accounts produced by
Galen. At the time, Galen was considered an unquestionable authority, so much so that Vesalius faced much
mockery and
ridicule for daring to point out some basic errors in Galen's account. Galen, for his part, had eschewed the dissection of human subjects, figuring that a
Barbary ape was close enough to stand in. From this, Galen errantly presumed that mans'
sternum, ribs, ventricles, and other structures were the same in number and arrangement as those of the ape. Physicians for generations after this were equally content to study animal corpses, and presume Galen's projections from animal to man to be correct.
In Vesalius' day, religious prohibitions made it difficult, nearly impossible, to dissect a human corpse, and so there was (quite surprisingly) no effective and systemic way to discern how
bone and
muscle came together, and how organs did what they did (or, even, what it was that they did). Perhaps it was because Vesalius was raised in a
famous family of
physicians that he had the
confidence to upend this key
prohibition, acquiring
corpses of
condemned criminals to cut apart in the presence of
painters who would capture each step of the dissection. And so it was that this Flemish doctor of medicine put to rest the errors of Galen -- and made one other very important find. For, you see, it was not until 1543 that Vesalius put to rest as well the
myth that
Biblical Creation had left man with one missing rib. Vesalius did what none before had dared (or at least had dared to publish). He simply
counted the ribs, and found that in every instance their number was even, and was the same for man as for woman.
Some protesters against Vesalius' discoveries called for him to be subject to inquisitorial investigation; others went so far as to insist that Galen had been correct for his day, but that human anatomy itself had been altered since Galen's time to come, then, to Vesalius' findings. Vesalius himself was occupied, after teaching for a time in Padua, as Imperial Physician to Emperor
Charles V of
Germany, a post in which he was well-liked, and which protected Vesalius from persecution for his discoveries. But, perhaps desiring to put the lie to charges against his faithfulness, and perhaps needing time to consider an offer for a new teaching appointment in
Italy, Vesalius made a pilgrimage to the
Holy Land; on his return voyage, the brilliant physician was
shipwrecked and died, in 1564, at age 50.