A Brief History of Medicine
VESALIUSSome of the Greek culture and medical sciences that Europe had mislaid during the Middle Ages lived on and evolved in the East, as the Greek texts were translated into Syriac and from Syriac into Arabic. A few Oriental lights shone in the Medieval fog - in the 10th Century, Al Biruni, who came from central Asia, and who has been overlooked by the western historian, and in the following century Persia's Razes and the Arab Avicenna. But the great change was not to come until Martin Luther lifted the veils of obscurantism.
The first step out of the medical darkness was taken by Andreas Vesalius, a Belgian who since childhood had been cutting up live mice, cats and dogs and had declared the pig his favourite animal, for it never stopped grunting under his knife, while the other animals after a certain point stopped complaining.
His vivisections taught Vesalius nothing. It was only when he started dissecting the bodies of the hanged that he had stolen outside the walls of Luttich that he discovered Galen's errors, and published his findings in a treatise which is still considered a masterpiece of descriptive anatomy: De humani corporis fabrica, illustrated in Titian's workshop and published in Basil 1543.
But it was still dangerous to hint that Galen had erred. A few years earlier Paracelsus had lost his teaching position at the University of Basil for having publicly burned Galen's works; and his dismissal was demanded by the students themselves who worried about such disrespect of respected standards. And as late as 1560 an Englishman who wanted to be a doctor was asked first to recant the doubts he had expressed about Galen's teachings.
In fact Vesalius, who was teaching anatomy at in Italy, at the University of Padua, could well have paid the penalty of heresy and been burnt alive at the stake, as was to happen ten years later to Miguel Servetus, the Spanish doctor-priest who had sectioned a cadaver; but Vesalius explained that he didn't want to contradict Galen but rather to demonstrate how accurate his descriptions had been - except for that venial little sin of assuming that what is true of a quadruped is also true of a man. However, the majority of the university brains, including his teacher Jakobus Sylvius, took their distance, accusing Vesalius of "heresy and folly". And Vesalius preferred to repair to Spain.
Truth had nevertheless started coming to light; but Galenism proved thick-skinned. Ignorance, especially the ignorance of the learned, has always been slow to die. For example, based on his observation of quadrupeds, Galen had described the human hipbone as being flared, like that of an ox. When Vesalius' book brought out the truth, the university teachers would not admit that they had perpetuated a millenarian error and explained that since Galen's day the human hipbone had changed shape owing to the habit of wearing pants instead of the toga.
It took almost two centuries after the publication of Vesalius' work to dissipate the last remnants of Galenic fog - but only to make room for another doctrine that was equally wrong and tyrannical, but far more harmful.