Aspects of Anatomical Investigation from Alexandria to Padua

Abstract

After reflecting on the translation of the term fabrica in the title of Vesalius’ work De humani corporis fabrica, our study focuses on Vesalius’s follower Realdo Colombo and his work De re anatomica and especially on book 14 devoted to animal vivisection. Two ways of teaching and researching are available to the anatomist in Padua university in Vesalius' and Colombo's time: the vivisection of human bodies, that is the vivisection of bodies of executed people sentenced to death, and animal vivisection. Realdo justifies dissection by paradoxically using the arguments used in Alexandria to justify human vivisection. Research on living beings is considered as necessary to any serious anatomical investigation. Then follows the description of a vivisection operated on a dog and the feelings it brings to the operator.