Vesalius, Andreas

Born in a dynasty of doctors from the Whiting clan: great-great-grandfather was rector of the University of Leuven and commentator on Avicenna ; Grandfather Everard was a court physician of Emperor Maximilian and a commentator on Razes ; father was a pharmacist of the ruler of the Netherlands, Princess Margarita.

Andreas studied medicine in Belgium ( University of Leuven ) and in France (universities of Montpellier and Paris ), worked and taught mainly in Italy , being a professor at the universities of Padua , Bologna and Pisa at the same time. In 1537, he received a bachelor's degree in medicine from the medical faculty of the University of Leuven and a doctorate in medicine from the University of Padua. Vesalius was one of the first to study the human body. Studying the works of Galen and his views on the structure of the human body, Vesalius corrected over 200 errors of the canonized ancient author. He also corrected the mistake of Aristotle that a man has 32 teeth and a woman has 38. He classified his teeth into incisors, fangs and molars.

In 1543, in Basel, he published his main work, De humani corporis fabrica libri septem ( On the Structure of the Human Body ), in which he generalized and systematized achievements in the field of anatomy. The book was based on the lectures that he gave in Padua . These lectures differed from those adopted at that time in that Vesalius dissected human corpses to illustrate his words. The book contains a thorough study of the organs and the entire structure of the human body.

The text of the book was accompanied by 250 drawings by the artist Jan Stefan van Kalkar , a permanent illustrator of the books of Vesalius. The publication of such a book was made possible thanks to many achievements of the Renaissance, including discoveries in the visual arts, as well as inventions in the printing technique. Thanks to the latter, the illustrations in the book surpass everything that was before with the accuracy and fineness of the lines.

Galen’s gross errors, including the idea that the liver, and not the heart, is the center of the circulatory system, have been fixed in the “Structure”. However, Vesalius remained true to some of Galen’s misconceptions, for example, he also considered venous and arterial blood to be different fluids (this mistake was corrected by William Harvey in his work “On Venous Valves” in 1628).

Opponents of Vesalius, adhering to the traditions of medieval scholastic medicine, began to persecute him for an encroachment on the authority of Galen. Vesalius' own teacher, Guido Guidy (also known as Jacques Dubois and Silvius Jacobus), disowned him and wrote a caustic pamphlet against his former student, “A refutation of the insanity of a madman on the anatomical works of Hippocrates and Galen, compiled by Jacob Sylvius, the royal interpreter on medical issues in Paris "(1555). Against Vesalius turned and his friend, a student and deputy in the department of Realdo Colombo . As a result, well-wishers succeeded in expelling the scientist from Padua.

Vesalius published his work at the age of 28, having spent a lot of effort to make the book as perfect as possible. The resonance of the “Description” brought him not only attacks, but also material prosperity and fame. Vesalius was appointed court surgeon under the Holy Roman Emperor Karl Pyat (whose son the author dedicated the work to Philip ). In fact, he was a military surgeon of the imperial army (the Habsburgs fought with France in 1544), and often replaced the personal physician Charles V Cornelius van Byersdorp .

After the abdication of Charles V in 1556, Vesalius went to the service of his son, the Spanish king Philip II; when he and his court moved from Brussels to Madrid in 1559, the medic followed him. However, after the death of Gabriele Fallopio in 1562, he decided to return to the anatomy classes at the liberated department in Padua, which he received in May 1564.

Made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem . He died on the way back from Jerusalem, being thrown by a shipwreck on the island of Zakynthos . The place of his burial is unknown.

For a long time, it was believed that for autopsy, which once killed a person who was in lethargy , Vesalius was sentenced to death by the Spanish Inquisition , but thanks to the intercession of the Spanish king Philip II , the death penalty was replaced by the aforementioned pilgrimage. Modern historians ^{[ what? ]} consider this story a fiction.

A portrait engraving (see right) of Vesalius, busy with the anatomy of the hand, was performed by Dutch artist Jan Stefan van Kalkar (1499 - c. 1550). It is curious that there is another portrait of Vesalius in the Hermitage ( Petersburg ) by the same artist, but he is filled with oil paints. The portrait was acquired in Paris from the Baudouin collection in 1781. He was attributed to an unknown artist of the 16th century , then to the pen of Moretto da Brescia . The last attribution is the work of Giovanni da Calcara (the Italianized name of the artist, a student of Titian , who lived in Italy for a long time and died in Naples ).

• “ De corpore humani fabrica ” (possible translation of “de humani corporetis fabrica”) ( 1543 ).
• Complete Works of Vesalius - ed. Durgav and Albin ( 1725 ).

• In 1970, a crater on the moon was named in honor of Andreas Vesalius.
• Depicted on postage stamps of Belgium in 1942 and 1964, Hungary in 1989 and modern stamps of the Czech Republic.
• On January 7, 2015, a film was shown on the 365 Days of TV channel, which described in detail the work and achievements of Vesalius

• Epiphany N. A. To the translation into Russian of the anatomical tract of Andrei Vesaliy // Clinical Medicine, 1959. - T. 9.
• Zhdanov D. A., Fomicheva T. D. Andrei Vesalius and his pictorial portrait in the Hermitage // Archive of Anatomy, Histology and Embryology. - T. 2, 1964.
• Kupriyanov V.V. Andrey Vesaliy in the history of anatomy and medicine. - M .: Medicine, 1964 .-- 136 p.
• Ternovsky V.N. Andrey Vesalius. - M.: “Science”, 1965. - 256 p.
• The history of the culture of Western Europe during the Renaissance / Ed. L. M. Bragin. - M.: "Higher School", 1999.
• Loginov, Svyatoslav. More precious than many (medical chronicles). - SPb .: Publishing House of the Union of Writers of St. Petersburg, 2013.
• Sorokina T. S. Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) and the Padua Anatomical School (on the 500th anniversary of birth) // Problems of Social Hygiene, Health Care and the History of Medicine. 2014. No. 5. S. 52-56.
• O'Malley, CD. Andreas Vesalius of Brussels, 1514-1564. Berkley: University of California Press, 1964.