Renaissance Anatomy Advances and Vesalius' Contributions

Renaissance Anatomy Advances

• Renaissance advancements in anatomy stemmed from several factors:
  • Reduced Church influence, allowing more frequent dissections at universities. This spurred challenges to Galen's work.
  • Increased interest in observation and experimentation, instead of solely relying on ancient texts.
  • Development of more accurate artistic techniques for depicting the human body, facilitating knowledge sharing.
  • The printing press enabled faster and wider distribution of anatomical knowledge.

Vesalius' Contributions

• Vesalius, a Padua University anatomy professor (1537), challenged Galen's work by studying human bodies directly.
  • He famously allegedly stole the body of an executed criminal for study.
  • He conducted public dissections.
  • He corrected several Galenic errors, including identifying the human jaw as a single bone opposed to two.
  • He also demonstrated the septum in the heart has no holes, contradicting Galen.
  • He wrote On the Fabric of the Human Body, illustrating accurate anatomical depictions, widely circulated across Europe.

Harvey's Contributions

• William Harvey, in line with Renaissance scientific inquiry, challenged Galen's theories on the heart and blood circulation.
• He used careful experimentation, observation, and measurement to prove the heart's function as a pump and blood circulation.
  • Dissections on live lizards were conducted.
  • Experiments involved forcing rods and liquids through arteries to demonstrate one-way blood flow.
• Harvey published his findings but faced opposition from other doctors resistant to Galenic reassessment.

Renaissance Surgery

• Renaissance surgery remained mostly unchanged from medieval practices, primarily focusing on three procedures: trephining, amputation, and tumor removal.
• Ambroise Paré, a Renaissance surgeon, made important improvements in treating gunshot wounds.
  • He replaced painful boiling oil treatment with an ointment made from turpentine, proving effective and significantly less painful.
  • He introduced ligatures for tying arteries after amputation instead of burning the stump, which eased pain.
  • The lack of sterilization with ligatures, however, led to frequent infections, hindering the wider adoption of his technique.

Limitations of Renaissance Anatomical Discoveries

• Despite Vesalius' and Harvey's groundbreaking work on anatomy, their findings were not widely implemented in treatment or surgery.
  • William Harvey continued to use bloodletting even understanding blood quantity remained unchanged.
  • Paré's advancements in gunshot wound treatment only affected a limited number of individuals involved in battles.

Traditional and Emerging Methods in Treatment (1600s-1700s)

• Traditional methods, rooted in the Four Humours theory, persisted.
  • Doctors continued to employ practices like bloodletting and purging.
  • Herbal remedies remained ubiquitous in medicine.
  • Supernatural explanations (e.g., divine punishment, planetary influence) persisted, notably during the Great Plague of 1665.
• New approaches emerged, including those used during the Great Plague:
  • Quarantine and late-night burials.
  • Paracelsus' rejection of the Four Humours theory in favor of metal and mineral-based remedies. Discovery of new medicinal plants/herbs.
  • Some doctors proposed the idea of airborne diseases.

Inoculation

• Inoculation, a traditional method to prevent smallpox, involved introducing pus from smallpox scabs into a patient's skin.
  • It presented a risk of death or transmitting the disease further, with only the very wealthy able to afford it.

Edward Jenner and Vaccination

• Edward Jenner, a Gloucestershire doctor, observed milkmaids' resistance to smallpox after recovering from cowpox.
  • Subsequent experimentation, with positive outcomes in testing, demonstrated cowpox inoculation prevented smallpox (called vaccination by Jenner).
• Jenner's discovery encountered strong opposition.
  • Concerns arose regarding new ideas, and how to explain them.
  • Doctors' financial interests in inoculation methods were threatened.
  • Vaccination's inherent risks.

Vaccination's Adoption

• Government support, like funding for a London clinic, secured improved widespread adoption of Jenner's vaccination method.
• Britain mandated vaccinations to help eradicate smallpox.
• Smallpox eradication achieved in the 1900s through mass vaccination programmes.