ANDREAS VESALIUS IN PISA

Andreas Vesalius is the most commanding figure in European medicine, after Galen and before Harvey. His dissections and lectures were in considerable demand. Having just published the De humani corporis fabbrica, and before operating as a private physician of Emperor Charles V, the anatomist spent some months conducting demonstrations of anatomy at the universities of Bologna, Pisa and Florence. The present study aim to reconstruct the journey he made to Pisa, where he was invited by Duke Cosimo I De’ Medici. The work of Andrea Corsini and O’Malley, the study of Vesalio’s Epistola… rationem modumque propinandi radicis Chynae dedocti... , and some unpublished documents make possible a more detailed reconstruction of the period Vesalio spent in the Nuovo Studio Pisano, carrying out public human dissections, discussing and refuting most of the Galenic doctrine