1543

Vesalius corrects the body

Medicine · Europe · Italy

De humani corporis fabrica, with its woodcut anatomy, was built from Vesalius's own dissections — and showed that Galen, the unquestioned authority, had been wrong about much.

Why it matters

Checking authority against the thing itself — the act that defines empirical science — happened here on the human body. Anatomy became visual, printed and demonstrable.

People

Andreas Vesalius

Threads

This event sits on Medicine.

Related events

Sources

  • Encyclopædia Britannica — Andreas Vesalius