Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 280

ANDREAS VESALIUS (1514-1564) Paraphrasis in nonum librum Rhazae . . . de affectuum singularum corporis partium curatione. Apud Joan. Tornaesium & Gulielmum Gazeium 1551 212 [28] pp. 11.6 cm.

Vesalius is a name known and revered by all students of medicine. In his short lifetime, this Brussels-born Fleming came to occupy one of the foremost places in the history of medicine, not only as the inaugurator of a real science of anatomy, but also as a founder, with Harvey later, of medical science based on fact rather than tradition. To have completed before his twenty-ninth year a task of the magnitude of the Fabrica (see No. 281), at a time when bodies for dissection were most difficult to obtain and legal authority difficult to resist, is a feat to which the literary history of the profession offers no parallel. Mainly because he questioned (and actually proved erroneous) many old Galenic "laws," he had a far from tranquil life and, after his studies at Louvain, Montpellier, Paris, and Padua, he was at the center of a great scientific uproar at the last university because of his daring anatomical demonstrations and his strongly-phrased doubts of some old masters. Fortunately he had the backing of the royal court, so, eventually sickened by the continuous sniping of his contemporaries, he discontinued the pursuit of anatomy to become court physician to Emperor Charles V, and in 1556 to his successor, Philip II, at Madrid. In 1563 Vesalius undertook a trip to Jerusalem and, on the return trip in 1564 (the story of which is somewhat hazy), the ship is said to have been wrecked near the island of Zante in the Ionian Sea. Vesalius supposedly died of typhoid fever and was buried in a plain crypt in the little Church of the Virgin at Zante. Vesalius had been pursuing his medical studies in Paris for three years when he was forced to return to Louvain in 1536 upon the outbreak of hostilities between France and Belgium. He resumed his medical studies at Louvain later that year and, from what is known, prepared the present work as his thesis for the degree of bachelor of medicine. Vesalius undertook this paraphrase of the ninth book of Rhazes (see No. 61) primarily to compare the therapeutics of the Arabs with those of the Greeks. It is likely that he selected Rhazes because he was advised to do so by his mentor, Nicolas Florenas (fl. 1530), and also because Rhazes was held in high repute by Jacques Dubois (see No. 178 ff.) under whom he had studied in Paris. Vesalius also wanted to edit and correct the poorly translated text so that the book might be more readily understandable to those who wished to use it. He did improve the text stylistically, provided better identification of many of the drugs, and added numerous marginal notes that called attention to prevailing views or cast doubt on Rhazes' observations. The book was first published at Louvain in 1537, was reprinted later that year at Basel, appeared in a 1544 edition of Rhazes' Opera omnia published at Basel, and was reissued in 1551, 1586, and 1592.

See Related Record(s): 281 61 178

Cited references: Cushing V65; Cushing Vesalius I.-4; Durling 4592; Waller 9895

Gift of John Martin, M.D.