ABSTRACT
Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564) was a Belgian physician and anatomist. He was professor of surgery at Padua – one of the leading medical schools of the day. He wrote De Humani Corporis Fabrica, which was to become an iconic textbook of anatomy. At the start of the sixteenth century, the works of Galen and other ancient physicians were accepted as fact – Vesalius was one of the first to seek to prove or disprove their findings by his own work. In what seemed like blasphemy at the time, he was to prove Galen wrong on a number of counts. For example, he demonstrated that the mandible was made of only one bone and not two as Galen had thought.
