ABSTRACT
Italian anatomist who provided some of the essential preliminary discoveries for William Harvey’s work on the circulation of the blood. In his lifetime, Colombo strengthened in the anatomical tradition belief in the primacy of direct observation, criticism of previous observational errors, and the need to establish priority in the making of new observations as a means of gaining a professional reputation. Colombo’s only published work was his De re anatomica (1559). In it, he was highly critical of his former friend Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564), and he also showed himself to be an original anatomist and vivisectionist. Colombo’s dispute with Vesalius began when he had temporarily replaced him at Padua and had publicly criticized him for errors in anatomy and for passing off descriptions of animal anatomy as human (precisely the fault that Vesalius criticized in Galen). Vesalius responded with bitter hostility in his Epistola…radicis chynae (Letter…[on] China Root, 1546).
