While still a young physician, Andreas Vesalius overturned the fourteen-centuries-old Galenic canon of medicine and founded modern scientific anatomy.

Vesalius was born in Brussels in what is today Belgium to a family established in medicine for several generations. Young Vesalius showed an early interest in anatomy. He attended the University of Louvain and then studied medicine at the University of Paris, where he became skilled at dissection under teachers who were dedicated followers of Galen.

After a stint as a military surgeon, Vesalius enrolled at the University of Padua, Europe's preeminent medical school, receiving his doctor of medicine degree in 1537. Immediately assuming a post as lecturer in surgery and anatomy at Padua, Vesalius proved to be an innovative teacher. Contrary to prevailing practice, he performed dissections himself during the lectures and illustrated the lesson with large, detailed anatomical charts. The lectures were enormously popular and demand for the...