There were many men who helped change the face of medicine but there were three men who stand out from the rest. These men are Andreas Vesalius, William Harvey and Ambroise Pare. We will look at each of these men in turn so we will start off with Andreas Vesalius.
In 1500 the most important medical book were that of the great Greek physician Cladius Galen. Galen’s ideas had been very dominant and influential for hundreds of years, and Vesalius was the first person to prove that some of Galen’s ideas had been wrong. Vesalius was born in Brussels in 1514. His father was a doctor and this may have set him on his path to greatness. Vesalius had an inquiring mind and was very keen to learn. Vesalius attended the University of Leuven and later the University of Paris where he studied medicine from 1533 to 1536, showing a special interest in anatomy. He then became a lecturer at the University of Padua. His continuing research revealed that Galen’s work was based upon the dissections of animals instead of humans. He was so keen to study the human body that he stole bones and skeletons from the local gallows. Using the knowledge that he had gained from his own human dissections, Vesalius wrote an elaborate book on anatomy called the ‘De Humani Corporis Fabrica’. The book showed wonderfully illustrated drawings of the human body. There were over 277 anatomical drawings in his book, which showed the human body in great detail.
This document was a milestone in medical history; hundreds of Galen’s anatomical errors were clearly shown in this remarkable book. The book aroused heated disputes; this was because older doctors would not allow themselves to believe that this young man could know better than the great Galen. Sadly in 1564 Vesalius died in a shipwreck off the island of Zacynthus.
Now we will take a look at William Harvey; William Harvey was born in 1578 in Kent, England. He studied at Cambridge where he got his degree in 1597. He continued his education at the University of Padua, the foremost medical school of the time where he studied under ‘Hieronymus Fabricius’. In 1615 Harvey began to work on the idea that blood circulated around the body. He experimented on live animals and dissecting the bodies of executed criminals. Using his finding his was able to prove that the heart was a pump, which forced the blood round the body. He also discovered that the veins then returned the blood back to the heart recycling it. Harvey’s work was helped by the fact that he discovered that there were valves in your veins. They stopped the blood flowing back the wrong way. He proved that one of Galen’s theories was wrong. In 1628 he published a book called ‘An Anatomical disquisition on the movement of the ‘Heart and Blood’
After he published the book Harvey lost many patients as they viewed his work as eccentric. It wasn’t until he died that people started to take notice of his ideas.
Another famous man from the Renaissance was Ambrose Pare a surgeon in the French army who stumbled upon a better method for sealing wounds than cauterising. Pare joined the French army as a surgeon and gained countless experience as the French where involved in so many wars. By chance one day Pare made an important discovery about soldier’s wounds. Usually to stop soldiers bleeding to death surgeons cauterised the wound, which involved a hot iron to scorch and seal the wound. Also they poured hot oil directly on to the wound to seal the wound as well. One day Pare had run out of oil to treat the wounded soldiers so he came up with an alternative method. He mixed together egg whites, oil of roses and turpentine, which he applied to the wound. He realised that it worked, that it sealed the wound and provided relief from pain. Very few people took Pare seriously because he had no university education. This meant that very few surgeons used his methods.
The Renaissance was a time when many new medical ideas were formed that now form the basis of modern medicine.