ABSTRACT
The Enlightenment is not celebrated in either the history of science or the history of medicine as the golden age of anatomy. As is the case with astronomy, the eighteenth century stands in the long shadow of the scientific revolution. Indeed, the De Humani Corporis Fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body) of Vesalius, published in the same year (1543) as Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus Orbium Celestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), is usually taken to mark the entry of anatomy into the scientific era.
