"What do Guts Have to do with It?"

The concept of our project is to try and explain the shift of belief from pre-cadaver age medicine, to post-cadaver age medicine. Andreas Vesalius was a man ahead of his time. Considered the Father of Modern Anatomy his fascination with the human body began as a student, when he started drawing different parts of the body. This continued with his commission of local artists to draw more accurately and more detailed drawings of the many aspects of the body that he studied. He went on to become a teacher in Italy, where he developed many new teaching techniques. Through his research he began to gain a deep and powerful understanding for how the human body worked, and how we could better understand the inner workings of the body. His teaching practices broke the boundaries of how students were taught. He would have students gather around and watch him dissect bodies, showing them the inner workings of organs, muscles, and tissues. These practices are still used in today’s classrooms. This man is truly a revolutionary mind, his ideas and thoughts have made waves for hundreds of years. Throughout his research and teaching, he wrote a series of books on his findings and techniques. One of the most famous books was De Humani Corporus Fabrica. http://archive.nlm.nih.gov/proj/ttp/flash/vesalius/vesalius.html This is still to this day considered one of the more influential books on anatomy of all time. He went into great detail about each bone, tissue, vein, etc. of the body. His detail and knowledge was unparalleled at the time. It was in this book that the first understandings of mechanical ventilation (artificial breathing) were ever described. At the age of fifty Vesalius died of natural causes. Though he died poor, he left the world of medicine with a wealth of ideas and knowledge. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15378c.htm