Andreas Vesalius, the Reformer of Anatomy — John Shaqi
Andreas Vesalius, the Reformer of AnatomyBall, James Moores
History
Andreas Vesalius, the Reformer of Anatomy
Ball, James Moores
Vesalius, Andreas, 1514-1564
The new city which for centuries was the intellectual and commercial
storehouse of Europe, Africa and India, was of oblong form. Lake
Mareotis washed its walls on the south, while the Mediterranean bathed
its ramparts on the north. Provided with broad streets, it was adorned
with magnificent houses, temples and public buildings. At the centre of
the city was the Mausoleum in which was deposited the body of Alexander,
embalmed after the manner of the Egyptians. Alexandria was divided into
three parts: the _Regio Judaeorum_ or Jews’ quarter, in the northwest;
the _Rhacotis_, or Egyptian section, on the west, containing the
Serapeum with a large part of the Library; and on the north, the
_Bruchaeum_, or Greek portion, containing the greater part of the
Library, the Museum, the Temple of the Caesars and the Court of Justice.
The population was cosmopolitan in character; the statues of the Greek
gods stood by the side of those of Osiris and of Isis; the Jews forgot
their language and spoke Greek; and under the Ptolemies, who were of
Greek descent, Alexandria became a centre of intellectual life and
culture.
To the medical historian the most interesting feature of Alexandria was
the Museum or University. Here were assembled the intellectual giants of
the earth: Archimedes and Hero, the philosophers; Apelles, the painter;
Hipparchus and Ptolemy, the astronomers; Euclid, the geometer;
Eratosthenes and Strabo, the geographers; Manetho, the historian;
Aristophanes, the rhetorician; Theocritus and Callimichus, the poets;
and Erasistratus and Herophilus, the anatomists, all of whom labored in
quiet upon the peaceful banks of the Nile. The early Christian church
drew from “the divine school at Alexandria” such eminent teachers as
Origen and Athanasius. Here were a chemical laboratory, a botanical and
zoölogical garden, an astronomical observatory, a great library, and a
room for the dissection of the dead.
In the Alexandrian school of medicine Erasistratus and Herophilus taught
the science of organization from actual dissections. The generosity of
the Ptolemies not only furnished them with an abundance of dead
material, but condemned malefactors were used for human vivisection.
Celsus[5] states that the Alexandrian anatomists obtained criminals,
“for dissection alive, and contemplated, even while they breathed, those
parts which nature had before concealed.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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