Vesalius

Vesalius, ANDREAS, anatomist, was born at Brussels, 31st December 1514, and studied at Louvain, Cologne, Montpellier, and Paris. He lectured at Basel, became surgeon to the imperial army in the Low Countries, and was professor of Anatomy successively at Padua, Pisa, Bologna, and Basel. In 1544 he became body-surgeon to Charles V., living in Madrid. He incurred great odium by opposing Galen and by dissecting human bodies; and went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but died on the way at Zante, 15th October 1564. His De Corporis Humani Fabrica (1543) marks an epoch in anatomy. See B. W. Richardson in Asclepius (1885), and G. M. Cullen in Dublin Jour. of Med. Science (1894).