The contributions to the medicine and animal dissection by Galen was followed by the discovery of anatomy, physiology and surgery. In 15th century Ambrose Pare, Father of surgery took an initiative following Andreas Vesalis contributions to anatomy. Late in 16th William Harvey gave a stature to physiology in sixteenth century.
Anatomy in 15th century
Andreas Vesalius took only five years to underdercut the foundation stone of infallibility from beneath Galen.There had been anatomists before Vesalius, Andreas Vesalius (1514-64) was a Belgian anatomist who developed an interest in anatomy. During his research Vesalius showed that the anatomical teachings of Galen, revered in medical schools, was based upon the dissections of animals even though they were meant as a guide to the human body.
Vesalius wrote the revolutionary texts, De Humani Corporis Fabrica, in seven volumes on the structure of the human body. The volumes were completely illustrated with fine engravings based on his own drawings. These are the most accurate and comprehensive anatomical texts to date.
Ambrose Pare
William Harvey
Surgery in 15th Century
Surgery had its repute and its rebirth in the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries, in Italy and among some practitioners of medicine, and among learned persons of the period. Ambroise Paré (1510-1590)gave his most significant contributions to amputation surgery and prosthetics sciences and its regarded as the Father of modern surgery.
His importance in the development of modern surgery may be compared with that of his contemporary, Andreas Vesalius, in the development of modern anatomy. The chief services rendered by Paré are a reform in the treatment of gunshot wounds, and the revival of the practice of ligating arteries after amputation.
Physiology in 16th Century
William Harvey (1578-1657) English physician who observed the action of the heart in small animals and fishes, proved that heart receives and expels blood during each cycle. Experimentally, he also found valves in the veins, and correctly identified them as restricting the flow of blood in one direction. He developed the first complete theory of the circulation of blood, believing that it was pushed throughout the body by the heart's contractions. He published his observations and interpretations in Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus (1628), often abbreviated De Motu Cordis.
Harvey was also the first to suggest that humans and other mammals reproduced via the fertilisation of an egg by sperm. It took further two centuries before a mammalian egg was finally observed, but nonetheless Harvey's theory won credibility during his lifetime.
Ambroise Pare had his first experience treating men for gunshot injuries, he improvised later cautery irons used for hemotasis in amputations and reintroduced ligatures.
