Join us as we welcome, Daniel Garrison, Emeritus Professor in the Department of Classics at Northwestern University.

Vesalius Turns the Page on Ancient Medicine.
Thursday, November 20, 2014, 5:30-6:30
Hardin Library Room 401
Display of ancient Vesalius treatises to follow lecture.

This talk concentrates on the procedural contributions Vesalius made in his 1543 De humani corporis fabrica. Vesalius began his medical studies at the University of Paris, which was still a conservative institution that relied heavily on readings from Galen and later Medieval summaries and required little or no hands-on dissection, even of animals. Vesalius introduced a new regimen at the University of Padua that called for hands-on dissection by the students themselves and visual testing of anatomy rather than dependence upon books. He relied upon a tag from Horace, "Given to swear by the words of no man" which later became the motto of the Royal Society.

Cosponsored by the University of Iowa History of Medicine Society, the UI Classics Department, and the UI Center for the Book.