Andreas Vesalius was born at Brussels, December 31, 1514. He studied at Louvain and then at Paris, where at that time great scientists taught, and among others the celebrated anatomist Jacques Dubois, generally known by the Latinized name of Sylvius.[281] The latter, a great admirer of Galen, whose anatomical writings served as texts for his lectures, became jealous of the young Belgian student, who was his assistant, and who gave undoubted proofs of great genius, and of extraordinary passion in anatomical research. Vesalius often defied the greatest dangers in order to obtain corpses either from the cemetery of the Innocents or from the scaffold at Montfaucon. He soon surpassed his most illustrious masters, and at only twenty-five years of age published splendid anatomical plates, which astonished the learned. He acquired also great renown as surgeon, and in this capacity he followed the army of Charles V in one of his wars against France. After having been professor of anatomy in the celebrated University of Louvain (Belgium), he was invited by the Venetian Republic to teach in the University of Padua, which, through him, became the first anatomical school in Europe. Yielding to the requests of the magistrates of Bologna and Pisa, he also taught in those famous universities, before immense audiences. [Illustration: Andreas Vesalius.] Before Vesalius, Galen’s anatomy had served as the constant basis for the teaching of this science. Although even from the end of the fifteenth century dead bodies were dissected in all the principal universities, the teachers of anatomy always conformed, in their descriptions, to those of Galen, so that the authority of this master, held infallible, prevailed even over the reality of facts.