Biology and Its Makers: With Portraits and Other IllustrationsLocy, William A. (William Albert)
History
Biology and Its Makers: With Portraits and Other Illustrations
Locy, William A. (William Albert)
Biology -- History
Many amusing arguments were brought forward to discredit Vesalius, and
to uphold the authority of Galen. Vesalius showed that in the human
body the lower jaw is a single bone--that it is not divided as it is
in the dog and other lower mammals, and, as Galen had taught, also
in the human subjects. He showed that the sternum, or breast bone,
has three parts instead of eight; he showed that the thigh bones are
straight and not curved, as they are in the dog. Sylvius, his old
teacher, was one of his bitterest opponents; he declared that the human
body had undergone changes in structure since the time of Galen, and,
with the object of defending the ancient anatomist, "he asserted that
the straight thigh bones, which, as every one saw, were not curved in
accordance with the teaching of Galen, were the result of the narrow
trousers of his contemporaries, and that they must have been curved in
their natural condition, when uninterfered with by art!"
The theologians also found other points for contention. It was a
widely accepted dogma that man should have one less rib on one side,
because from the Scriptural account Eve was formed from one of Adam's
ribs. This, of course, Vesalius did not find to be the case. It was
also generally believed at this time that there was in the body an
indestructible resurrection-bone which formed the nucleus of the
resurrection-body. Vesalius said that he would leave the question of
the existence of such a bone to be decided by the theologians, as it
did not appear to him to be an anatomical question.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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