Under cover of night, fresh corpses are shipped down river from Florence for dissection by Andreas Vesalius. Presented by: Antonio Ricci Medici Archive Project Fellow

Click for large image (Image Credit: University of Michigan Library)

DOCUMENT CITATION:
Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mediceo del Principato 1171, Insert 6, fol. 286. (Entry 2435 in the "Documentary Sources" database.)

TRANSLATION:
[...] Vesalius has arrived here to do his anatomy [ie. anatomical demonstration] and his coming greatly pleases His Excellency [Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici]. Everything is being organized so that the anatomy will be carried out with all possible order and ceremony. The purpose of this special dispatch is only to procure the bodies of two dead men there in Florence. To this effect, His Excellency has commanded that I write to Your Reverence and that a search be made immediately for two cadavers at the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova. These should not be old though it does not matter how young they are and it does not matter if one of them is female. Once the bodies are found, have them packed in two chests and send them down the Arno on a small barge or ship bringing them here as quickly as possible. Your Reverence will see that this matter is handled secretly, regarding both the procurement and the shipment of the bodies. Have them delivered here to the Monastery of San Francesco of the Minor Conventual Friars where instructions will have been left. Knowing Your Reverence’s great diligence, I ask nothing more than your careful attention to this matter [...]

TEXT:
[...] È arrivato qua il Vessalio per fare la notomia et la venuta sua assai ha dato piacere a S[ua] Ecc[ellen]tia [Cosimo I], et vassi ordinando tutta volta per farla con tutte quelle cerimonie et modi possibili. La cagione perchè si spaccia questa staffetta è solo per havere a questo effetto di costà duoi corpi d'huomini morti, et m'ha comandato Sua Ecc[ellen]tia lo scriva alla S[ignoria] V[ostra] R[everenda]che subito subito si dia alla busca nello Spedale di Santa Maria Nuova per haverne duoi non vecchi ma quanto più siano giovini non importerà, dice il [Francesco] Campana quando ve ne fussi uno di donna, non importerà, et trovati questi corpi lei gli farà chiudere in due casse et gl'invierà giù per lo Arno in un barchetto o navicello et con quella più celerità possibile gli farà condurre qua. Questo negotio V[ostra] S[ignoria] R[everenda] lo farà fare secretamente sì di levar gli corpi come di fargli condurre, et gli farà consegnare qua nel convento di San Francesco de' Frati conventuali dove sarà l'ordine. La S[ignoria] V[ostra] R[everenda è tutta diligentia però in questo non li dirò altro se non la sollecitudine [...]

HISTORICAL CONTEXT:
The arrival of Andreas Vesalius at the University of Pisa (or "Studio Pubblico", as it was called) was a major coup for both this institution and its patron, Cosimo I de’ Medici. Though the Studio boasted a long tradition dating back to the twelfth century, it had suffered a notable decline in later years. The young duke set about reviving its fortunes, as part of a broader effort to revitalize intellectual and cultural life in the Florentine State. He reorganized the Studio and launched an aggressive campaign to recruit faculty and students, then ordered the resumption of teaching in the fall of 1543 under the new system. The visit of the Flemish anatomist a few months later was timely and auspicious, since he came to Pisa at the very height of his prestige and fame.

Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) was born in Brussels and studied in Louvain and Paris before earning a doctorate in medicine at the University of Padua in 1537. Appointed there as a lecturer in surgery at the age of twenty-three, he quickly consolidated his reputation as both a teacher and an anatomist. The publication in 1543 of his De humani corporis fabrica (On the Structure of the Human Body) ensured his renown. In August of that year, he personally presented his publication to Emperor Charles V and was appointed physician to the Imperial household.

Vesalius revolutionized the science of anatomy. This field of study had experienced a resurgence in the late Middle Ages and continued to expand throughout the fifteenth-century, when human dissections were regularly carried out in many European universities. Anatomy, however, remained inexorably bound to the authority of a few ancient writers, particularly Galen (second century AD). Dissections were thus conceived less as empirical investigations than as illustrations of the doctrines expounded in these often highly theoretical texts. In such esteemed universities as Bologna and Padua, the professor of anatomy lectured from his cathedra, often reading from a textbook. Meanwhile, a barber/surgeon carried out the actual dissection. A third man, known as an ostentator, pointed to the relevant features as they appeared in the course of the autopsy. Though some students inevitably noted that the physical evidence contradicted textual authority, Vesalius was the first to develop a systematic response and propose a more scientific approach to anatomical investigation.

In addition to privileging the role of direct observation, Vesalius revolutionized pedagogical methods. He did away with the tripartite division of roles during anatomical demonstrations, taking over all the duties of barber/surgeon, ostentator and lecturer. Vesalius’ sessions would characteristically last for several days. He used skeletons and anatomical charts as points of reference. He involved the students directly by letting them take part in the actual dissection. Often he would dissect animals (usually dogs or monkeys) along with humans, thereby giving a crucial impetus to the development of modern comparative anatomy.

As the present letter demonstrates, it was not always easy to obtain the essential raw materials for anatomical research. Though some Church authorities may have looked askance at the practice of human dissection, there was no official ecclesiastical prohibition of this activity. A greater challenge, in fact, was obtaining permission from the family of the deceased. A frequent legal source of cadavers was the gallows, since the bodies of executed criminals were regularly made available to schools of medicine. In fact, the post mortem indignity of "anatomization" could be viewed as part of the punishment, while some grateful culprits were spared burning or dismemberment for the greater glory of medical knowledge. Even though capital executions were endemic, this seemingly inexhaustible source of supply did not prevent a chronic shortage of dissection material. Vesalius and his students often resorted to stealing bodies before or after burial. Though body-snatching and grave-robbing were both illegal, Vesalius tacitly acknowledged their necessity in De humani corporis fabrica.

Secretary Marzio di Girolamo Marzi Medici presented a practical solution to this common problem. Since suitable bodies were evidently unavailable in Pisa, the obvious place to find the dying and recently dead was the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence. Cosimo de’ Medici had direct influence there and could count on quick and discrete access (no questions asked by family members or others) to the best available product. An earlier beneficiary of these resources was Leonardo da Vinci, who had looked to Santa Maria Nuova during his own anatomical investigations.

There were two good reasons for haste in expediting this matter. Vesalius’ lectures were to begin in a matter of days and there was no time for elaborate negotiations. Also, in an age without refrigeration or effective preservatives, river travel would have been the quickest and most efficient way to delivery the bodies in satisfactory condition. In his own account of his Pisan visit, Andreas Vesalius explains that one of the cadavers provided by the Duke was of a nun from a burial vault in Florence. He also recounts that some local students made keys to the Camposanto (Pisa’s monumental medieval cemetery) and there obtained the body of a recently deceased seventeen-year old girl. These proved to be significant specimens for Vesalius, who had little experience dissecting female cadavers, since most of the executed criminals who came his way tended to be male. In his account of the Pisan visit published in his Letter on the China Root, Vesalius also noted that these were the first two adult virgins he had ever dissected, one being a nun and the other a hunchback: "I examined the uterus of the girl since I expected her to be a virgin because very likely no one had ever wanted her. I found a hymen in her as well as in the nun, at least thirty-six years old, whose ovaries, however, were shrunken as happens to organs that are not used" (as cited by O’Malley, page 201).

Vesalius’ anatomical demonstrations were well-received and at least some of them were attended by Duke Cosimo himself [see Mediceo del Principato 1171, Insert 1, f. 17, February 2, 1544; entry 6166 in the "Documentary Sources" database]. Vesalius also dissected animals in the course of his demonstrations, according to his usual practice [MdP 1171, insert 6, f. 283; January 30, 1544; entry 7059]. After his departure from Pisa at the conclusion of these lectures, Vesalius dedicated his Letter on the China Root to Duke Cosimo and also sent him a presentation copy of the published work (Epistola rationem modumque propinandi radicis Chynae decocti, Basel, 1546) [MdP 1173, Insert 4, f. 164, 25 April 1547, entry 2480]. Their esteem was evidently reciprocal and Cosimo offered the Fleming a permanent position at the Studio Pubblico with a large salary, which Vesalius necessarily refused. Charles V did not intend to lose the services of so celebrated a physician merely to please the young ruler of an Imperial client state.

A NOTE ON THE ILLUSTRATION

De humani corporis fabrica is the summa of Andreas Vesalius’ anatomical findings, defining both his principle of scientific investigation and his pedagogical method. Published in Basel in 1543 by the humanist printer Joannes Oporinus, this folio edition is a masterpiece of Renaissance printing. The author’s text is integrated with many detailed woodcut illustrations probably designed by Jan Stephan van Calcar and other members of Titian’s studio in Venice. The Fabrica established Vesalius as the leading anatomist of his day and proved essential to the later advances of such medical scholars as Bartolomeo Eustachi, Gabriele Fallopio and William Harvey.

The title-page of the Fabrica presents a public anatomical demonstration in eloquently stylized terms. The crowded composition, the grandiose architecture of the operating theater and the elegantly contorted figures of the students and spectators make it a striking example of mannerist design. The putti at the top of the page display the Vesalius arms, featuring three weasels, a play on the anatomist’s Flemish name of Van Wesele. The bearded figure to the left of the cadaver is a recognizable depiction of Vesalius himself. The skeleton suspended over the dissecting table served as a pedagogical aid while the monkey and dog were presumably subjects for dissection or even vivisection. One of the two assistants seated at the foot of the table is shown sharpening surgical tools. The full-length figure to the right of the table (shown with his head turned away from the dissection scene) is dressed in exotic and quite possibly Jewish garb, perhaps representing the physician Lazarus de Frigeis, a friend of Vesalius (O’Malley, p.140). Though the Fabrica was issued shortly before Vesalius’ visit to Pisa, the title-page includes a female cadaver and many of the other elements that characterized his demonstrations there, as documented in both archival and contemporary printed sources.

The illustration of the title-page of the Fabrica is used with permission of the University of Michigan's Digital Library Production Service. For more page images from the same source, see "Images from Andreas Vesalius' De Humani Corporis Fabrica, 1543"

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION

The fundamental work on Vesalius is C. D. O’Malley, Andreas Vesalius of Brussels, 1514-1564. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1964.