Today’s Assembled Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Famous anatomist Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) was the first to have the courage to criticize publicly the practice of limiting anatomical dissections to animals. In his monumental work De fabrica humani corporis, Vesalius describes the anatomy of the human body according to what he had observed at recently introduced public dissections at the “Theater of Anatomy.” He is considered the founder of the science of anatomy. The drawings by his illustrator Kalkar were more exact than anything that had been previously produced. The sketches also introduced a new aesthetic quality, showing dissected bodies in nearly life-like poses, standing in nature and surrounded by everyday items. According to available evidence, Andreas Vesalius was also the first person to assemble real bones in to an upright structure. He called this a skeleton after ho skeletos, which means ‘dried up’ in Greek. This was revolutionary, as no one had ever before dared to do anything similar with cadavers; he more or less pulled the dead out of their graves and put them back into society. A skeleton assembled by Vesalius can still be found at the Institute of Anatomy of the University of Basel.
Culled from: Body Worlds: The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies
Morbid Sightseeing: Vesalius Edition
And if you’d like to see Vesalius’ skeleton, along with many other bits and pieces of anatomy, why not visit the Anatomisches Museum at the University of Basel, Switzerland?
