The Illuminated Body: Representation in Medicine and Culture

Anatomy

Anatomists and the Four Humors

6. Johannes de Katham, Fasciculus Medicinae c. 1522 The great anatomist Mondino de Luzzi is shown lecturing. An assistant dissects the cadaver as students watch.

Claudius Galen
120 to 200

The Roman physician Galen, one of the most prominent medical authors of all time, systematized Greek (Hippocratic) medicine and kept magic, superstition and religion at bay. His own research covered topics in anatomy, pharmacology, pathology, hygiene, and philosophy. By dissecting apes and pigs, Galen was better able to understand human anatomy, although he erred when he assumed that animal and human anatomies were the same. Galen's medical writings were not successfully challenged until the sixteenth century, when Vesalius proved many of Galen's findings incorrect.

Avicenna
980 to 1037

The Arab physician, Avicenna, was born near Bokhara, Persia and considered a prodigy. He compiled a scientific encyclopedia at the age of twenty-one. His standing in both the Arab and Christian worlds was comparable to Galen's. The most famous of his approximately one hundred books was The Canon (Al-Qanun), the leading medical textbook in translation in the West for hundreds of years. Until the mid-seventeenth century, most universities based their medical curricula on Avicenna's writings.

Leonardo Da Vinci
1452 to 1519

Renaissance artists of the fifteenth century became increasingly interested in the human form, and the study of anatomy was part of every young artist's apprenticeship. Leonardo made hundreds of accurate anatomical drawings, of which more than 750 are in existence. He correctly portrayed the structure of the heart, including the valves and the coronary vessels, and his accuracy was unsurpassed in its day. He is considered to be the first artist/anatomist.

Andreas Vesalius
1514 to 1564

Vesalius is the founder of modern anatomy. Unlike most of his predecessors, he based his work on observation at the dissecting table. Born in Brussels into a family of physicians, he eventually became professor of anatomy at Padua. The publication in 1543 of De humani corporis fabrica libri septum("On the fabric of the human body in seven books") established his fame at the age of twenty-eight. Vesalius' research signals the beginning of anatomy as a formal science with a standardized anatomical terminology.

8. Andreas Vesalius, Opera omnia anatomica & Chirugica, cura Hermanni Boerhuave & Bernhardi Siegfried Albini. c. 1725

The Four Humors

7. Gregor Reisch, (c. 1467-1525,) Margarita Philososphica. One of the earliest printed illustrations of the internal organs.

In the time of Hippocrates (460-379 B.C.E.) the Greeks developed a system that explained illness in terms of four bodily humors: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. The humors originated in the heart, brain, liver and spleen, respectively, and were thought to be governed by the elements of air, water, fire and earth. When the humors were in balance the body was in health; excess or deficiency of one or more caused illness. Patients were diagnosed by examining the body's discharges. For instance, urine was thought to be divided into four layers, so if a sample was cloudy at the top, this indicated a disease of the head, the bottom layer correlated to the bladder, and so on. Bloodletting was commonly prescribed for humoral problems as a way to bring the four humors back into balance. Through bleeding, the excess humor was allowed to escape, thereby reestablishing the natural equilibrium of the body.