VESALIUS, ANDREAS

Vesalius, Andreas: translation

(1514 OR 1515-1564)

Andreas Vesalius was born on 31 December 1514 or 1 January 1515. Nothing is known of the first 15 years of his life, which were probably spent in Brussels. He studied at the universities ofLeuven, Paris, and Padua, where he obtained a degree in medicine in 1537. Appointed a professor of anatomy at Padua, he produced his chief workDe humanis corporis fabrica(1543) here. The work was based on research obtained by dissections of human cadavers. Employing this revolutionary procedure, Vesalius elicited a storm of criticism but, by so doing, he disproved many of the then-orthodox doctrines of the second-century Greek anatomist Galen. Named private physician to EmperorCharles Vin 1544, Vesalius returned to Brussels, where he married Anne van Hamme, the daughter of a councillor with the Brabant Chamber of Accounts. From 1553 to 1556, he lived primarily in Brussels, where he built a large home and ministered to the wealthy and the renowned. Called to Madrid by King Philip I n 1559, he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1563 and died in Greece on the island of Zante on the return voyage.

A statue of Vesalius sculpted by Joseph Geens in 1845 stands in the center of the place desBarricades.