FOUNDATIONSUS NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINEBY SUKANYA CHARUCHANDRAHomo sapiens Exposed, 1556
I
t wasn’t until the latter half of the 13th century that human
dissections became acceptable in Italy. Previously, both the
Roman Empire and Islamic law had prevented the dissection
of humans and its depiction. While the Greek surgeon Galen’s
anatomical drawings from the second century had been pre-
served and studied until the Renaissance, they were largely
based on dissections of animals, such as apes.
In the mid-16th century, however, famed Flemish anato-
mist Andreas Vesalius dissected the bodies of executed crimi-
nals—not an uncommon practice in that period—while study-
ing in Paris. He realized that Galen had been “misled” by apes,
whose anatomy was not exactly like that of humans.
“The challenge of anatomy is rendering the 3-D experi-
ence of opening bodies onto a 2-D page,” writes Hannah Mar-
cus, a science historian at Harvard University, in an email to
The Scientist. Lack of refrigeration also presented a challenge.
In overcoming those hurdles to produce the first realistic
depictions of internal human biology, Vesalius’s De Humani
Corporis Fabrica, published in Basel, Switzerland, in 1543,
galvanized the study of anatomy.
Meanwhile, Spanish-born Juan Valverde de Amusco was
learning anatomy under the guidance of Roman surgeon Realdo
Colombo, and possibly of Vesalius himself, at the University of
Padua in Italy. Valverde observed and participated in many dis-
sections under Colombo’s guidance, and pored over old books
on the subject. He later moved to Rome and was welcomed into
the home of Spanish Cardinal Juan Álvarez de Toledo.
In 1555, Valverde served as a doctor at the foremost con-
temporaneous Roman hospital, Santo Spirito, where many
luminaries of anatomy worked during that period, includ-
ing Bartolomeo Eustachi, under whom Valverde studied for
a time. The following year, Valverde crafted the Spanish-lan-
guage anatomical text Historia de la Composicion del Cuerpo
Humano, or Account of the Composition of the Human Body.
In seven parts, the book covered topics such as “bone and car-
tilage,” “ligaments and bandaging,” and “instruments of sen-
sation and external motion.” Largely copied from the 1543
and 1555 editions of Vesalius’s tome, it included 15 new illus-
trations in four copper plates. Valverde’s book also included
more than 60 corrections to Vesalius’s text, which enhanced
the contemporary understanding of the intracranial passage
of carotid arteries, the extraocular muscles, the stapes bone
of the middle ear, and how blood moves through the septum.
Historians attribute the few original illustrations to Spanish-
born Gaspar Becerra.
“Vesalius was angry about Amusco’s work and accused him of
plagiarism,” Marcus writes. In 1564, Vesalius wrote in his book
Anatomicarum Gabrielis Fallopii Observationum Examen that“Valverde who never put his hand to a dissection and is ignorant
of medicine as well as of the primary disciplines, undertook to
expound our art in the Spanish language only for the sake of
shameful profit.” Valverde conceded his borrowing, explaining
that Vesalius’s drawings were so thorough that “it would look
like envy or malignity not to take advantage of them.”
Valverde simplified Vesalius’s Latin text considerably,
however, as he considered it difficult to understand. His more
concise (and thus cheaper) text had more than a dozen edi-
tions published in Italian, Latin, Dutch, and Greek, in addi-
tion to Spanish, and facilitated the spread of scientific ideas
and Vesalius’s modern anatomy throughout Europe and the
Spanish Americas.gSKIN DEEP:This drawing from Valverde’sHistoria de la Composicion del Cuerpo
Humano is attributed to Gaspar Becerra.This drawing from Valverde’s Historia de la Composicion del Cuerpo