Andreas Vesalius

Andreas Vesalius was born in Brussels into a family of physicians to the Holy Roman Emperors. He studied at Louvain and Paris, where he was so eager to study bones that he collected them from cemeteries and from the gallows outside the city. At twenty-three he became professor of surgery and anatomy at the University of Padua in Italy. Unlike most professors, who read aloud from Galen while an assistant cut, Vesalius dissected bodies himself in front of students. He found that Galen's anatomy, based on animals, was wrong in more than two hundred details; for example, the human jaw is a single bone, and the breastbone has three parts, not seven. In 1543, at twenty-eight, he published De humani corporis fabrica, On the Fabric of the Human Body, with magnificent detailed woodcut illustrations, probably made in the workshop of the painter Titian. It was published the same year as Copernicus's book on the heavens. He became physician to the emperor Charles V and his son Philip II of Spain. He died in 1564 on the island of Zakynthos, returning from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

Andreas Vesalius is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: Went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1564 and died on the return journey; his personal beliefs are not otherwise well documented. Source: Wikipedia