The Biography of Andreas Vesalius

Andreas Vesalius was born on December 31, 1514, in Brussels, Belgium, to Anders van Wesel, and his wife, Isabel Crabbe. His father was court apothecary to Charles V of Spain.In 1528, he got enrolled at the University of Leuven taking arts, but later decided to pursue a career in the military. In 1533, he got enrolled at the University of Paris where he studied the theories of Galen and developed a keen interest in human anatomy.

In 1536, he was forced to leave Paris due to hostile relations between the Holy Roman Empire and France. He returned to Leuven and made a public dissection there, the first in eighteen years.In Leuven, he completed his graduation under the supervision of Johann Winter von Andernach. Later, he attended the University of Padua to earn his doctoral degree, which he received in 1537Andreas Vesalius was a 16th century Flemish physician, widely referred to as the founding father of the modern human anatomy.

He was a major figure of the scientific revolution and his greatest achievement was that of reintroducing human anatomy and its importance to the people. He was the first to lead the way to independent investigation in the examination of the structure of the human body. After conducting initial research, he became certain that it was absolutely essential to analyze real corpses to study the human body. He resurrected the use of human dissection, regardless of the strict ban by the Catholic Church. Basing his observations on self-made dissections, he wrote and illustrated the first comprehensive textbook of anatomy.

His book ‘De Humani Commis Fabrica’ (On the Structure of the Human Body) is one of the most important works about human anatomy. The seven volumes of the book laid down a solid understanding of human anatomy as the groundwork for all medical practice and curing. The book gave anatomy a new language and proved to be the most extensive and accurate description of the human body of its time. He revolutionized the study of biology and the practice of medicine by his careful description of the anatomy of the human.Vesalius plundered tombs to get human skeletons to study. His postersover the human body came to mean a lot of knowledge aboutdiseases and the development of medical science.

Until the early 1900s human skeletons were used as the source of knowledge before x-ray, ultrasound andother examination methods were available. Today we are equally interested in how the bodyworks and you are constantly making new discoveries about how to keep ithealthy, how diseases work and not least how their own body looks.Human body research is ongoing, affecting both anatomical and pharmaceutical discoveries.Important researchers in the 20th century includes for instance Frederick G. Banting and John Macleod (insulin), Karl Landsteiner (blood groups).Understanding of how the body is built and functioning is the most significant discovery of Andreas Vesalius.