Andreas Vesalius

Andreas Vesalius was a Flemish anatomist whose 1543 work De Humani Corporis Fabrica, published when he was twenty-eight, corrected numerous errors in Galen's anatomy through direct human dissection rather than the animal dissection Galen had relied on. Vesalius showed that the human mandible is a single bone rather than the two Galen described from ape anatomy, that the human sternum has three parts rather than Galen's seven, that the interventricular septum of the heart is solid rather than porous, and that humans lack the rete mirabile blood vessel network found in sheep, among other corrections. This atlas records what the historical record supports and is not medical advice.