sugery and anatomy

• During the Renaissance there were some important individuals who really challenged authority in anatomy (study of the make-up of the human body), physiology (study of working of the human body), and surgery. Vesalius, Pare, and Harvey made new discoveries with a big impact but not everybody welcomed their ideas and there was a lot of opposition to change. 
• William Harvey


  • Renaissance doctor.
  • King Charles I’s personal physician.
  • Wrote ‘An Anatomical Account of the Motion of the Heart and Blood’ (1628). This book described how blood circulates around the body, and that the body has a one way system for blood.
  • Harvey proved that the heart acts as a pump.
  • He proved this with dissection of humans and animals.
  • NOTE: His discovery was only gradually accepted, as it contradicted Galen. Many patients stopped seeing him as they thought he was mad. Also, his ideas did not make anyone better, it was only a start.
• Ambroise Paré


  • Renaissance surgeon.
  • Army surgeon, and was surgeon to kings of France.
  • Famous surgeon in Europe because of his books ‘Ten Books on Surgery’ and ‘Apology and Treatise’.
  • Changed the treatment of gunshot wounds. He replaced the use of boiling oil on wounds with his own mixture of egg yolks, rose oil and turpentine.
  • He used ligatures to stop bleeding (silk threads tied around individual blood vessels) rather than using a cauterising iron.
  • He also designed and made the first false limbs for wounded soldiers, and included drawings of them in his books to spread the idea.
• Andreas Vesalius


  • Renaissance doctor and surgeon.
  • Wrote ‘The Fabric of the Human Body’ (1545), a detailed and fully illustrated description of human anatomy.
  • He respected Galen’s work, but proved that Galen was wrong in three ways:
  • The human jaw bone is made from one bone (Galen said it was two)
  • The breastbone has three parts (Galen said seven)
  • Blood does not flow into the heart through invisible holes in the septum – such holes do not exist.
• Andreas Vesalius impact


  Many doctors disputed this and he was criticised. Also, Vesalius didn’t actually make anyone healthier, his work was only a start.

  He also showed that doctors could learn more about anatomy, and had to carry out human (not animal) dissection to learn more.
• Opposition to change


  Some people embraced more scientific methods but others were not convinced. Many people did not agree with experimenting to prove theories and there were still many people who believed in Galen’s work and were reluctant to accept that he might have been wrong. They believed that going against Galen was going against God.  English textbooks for doctors continued to publish the ideas of Galen until the 1650s and people like Harvey were ridiculed for their ideas at the time. In everyday medicine very little changed. 
• The Renaissance (c1400-c1700)


  • The Renaissance was a time of new ideas and interest. New scientific ideas started to have an impact on medicine and public health. 
  • In 1440 the printing press was invented, meaning that new ideas could spread much more rapidly, especially with new universities being set up all around Europe. 
  • New thinkers, led by Paracelsus (1493-1541), began to challenge the work of Hippocrates and Galen.
  • In the 1600s people started doing experiments to prove that the old ideas were wrong.