Ideas about body were shared between medical practitioners and popular culture – patients talked about disease and sickness in same terms as healers Move on to Renaissance
Renaissance 1400-1600ish Key time was in Italian city states Humanist movement was revival of ancient manuscripts Idea was that pure truth could be found in original sources Provoked wave of searching for ancient texts and then producing new translations which were thought to be closer to originals
Physician up above reading from Galen Dissector performing dissection underneath Body is used to confirm Galen’s observations This is crucial point to appreciating how anatomy was to change Not learning from the body, simply using it as reinforcement of Galen’s written word
Probably most important person in renaissance anatomy = Vesalius Was born into a medical family in Brussels, trained in Paris = important because this was centre of medical humanism Remember we’ve talked about Sylvius’ translations of Galen’s anatomy Appointed deomonstrator and lecturer in surgery at Padua Now what is interesting is the way in which drawing became fundamental to his way of doing anatomy He used drawings to teach students, even when standing by a dissected human body Think back to zodiac man we saw earlier, these drawings start to differ radically from those of the body in medieval times
Now leave anatomy and move on to scientific revolution Irrevocable change in way Western society viewed natural world Scientific world view begins to overtake religious world view that we talked about earlier Only fair to say still matter of historical debate – was there a revolution or was there no such thing – talk a bit more about this later