Hands-On Anatomy

Vesalius had the models in his book
posing in picturesque environments.

We go to the doctor assuming our physicians know the difference between human and dog anatomy. However, that was not always necessarily the case. Into the 16th century, surgeons would teach their pupils about human anatomy by reading them the texts of Galen, a Greek physician in the second century. Physicians rarely if ever dissected human cadavers themselves; they learned anatomy from Galen's 1300-year-old texts, while Galen himself had never dissected a human cadaver due to religious restrictions.

Andreas Vesalius, a 16th-century physician, had a different approach. He dissected animal corpses, but he also dissected human cadavers and studied them extensively. To communicate (and show off) his knowledge, Vesalius wrote the Seven Books on the Fabric of the Human Body, commonly known as the Fabrica.

In the Fabrica, he included detailed descriptions and woodcuts of every layer of the body, from bones to nerves. Vesalius worked with commissioned artists to depict anatomy from multiple previously unseen perspectives. His goal was to clearly communicate the details of human anatomy to physicians and students. The Fabrica was so successful, cadaver dissections began to be more common. 

I thought I had a good grasp on human anatomy in high school, when we only learned from secondary sources. When I took an anatomy class with a lab my freshman year of college, however, I realized how little I actually knew. Studying the muscles on an arm you're holding in your hands is completely different from coloring in the biceps brachii on a page. We were doing more than learning about someone else's observations of the human body; we were discovering for ourselves how tendons connecting muscle to bone would allow a person to leap across a stage or pick up a chair.

Vesalius had some of his models depicted
with some muscles reflected to show superficial
and deep muscles.

Vesalius brought the study of anatomy into the enlightenment with his emphasis on observing bodies first-hand; it was kind of like Ad Fontes, but with corpses being the primary sources. Further, by communicating his observations in great detail, he allowed many more people to get close to that experience through studying his precise woodcuts. He demonstrates well what I think we should all still do: seek first-hand knowledge and help others do the same.

Vesalius's Fabrica, annotated
Image credit: Skeleton, Muscle Model