Renaissance Medicine: Vesalius, Harvey, and the Great Plague
Renaissance Medicine: Vesalius, Harvey, and the Great Plague
The Renaissance (c.1400-1700) was a period of cultural and intellectual revival that began in Italy and spread across Europe. It brought significant changes to medicine, particularly in anatomy and the understanding of the body, though progress was slow and most ordinary people continued to rely on traditional treatments.
Why Did Medical Ideas Begin to Change?
- The printing press (Gutenberg, c.1440) — Allowed new ideas to spread more quickly and widely than ever before. Medical textbooks could be produced in large numbers.
- The Reformation — The Protestant challenge to the Catholic Church weakened the Church's control over learning and made it easier to question traditional authorities like Galen.
- The Renaissance spirit — Emphasis on observation, investigation, and challenging old ideas. Artists like Leonardo da Vinci produced detailed anatomical drawings from dissection.
- Increased dissection — From the 14th century, some universities (e.g. Padua in Italy) permitted human dissection, allowing direct study of the body.
- Scientific method — A growing emphasis on observation and experiment rather than relying solely on ancient texts.
Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564)
Vesalius was a Flemish anatomist who became Professor of Surgery at the University of Padua at just 23:
- He performed his own dissections (rather than having a barber-surgeon cut while he read from Galen, as was traditional).
- In 1543, he published De Humani Corporis Fabrica ("On the Fabric of the Human Body") — a revolutionary anatomical textbook with detailed, accurate illustrations based on human dissection.
- Vesalius proved that Galen had made errors because Galen had dissected animals (mainly Barbary apes and pigs), not humans:
- Galen said the human jaw was made of two bones — Vesalius showed it was one
- Galen said blood passed from one side of the heart to the other through invisible holes in the septum — Vesalius found no holes
Significance:
- Vesalius showed that Galen could be wrong — this encouraged others to question ancient authority.
- His work improved anatomical knowledge but did NOT immediately improve treatment or diagnosis.
- Many doctors rejected his findings and continued to follow Galen.
William Harvey (1578-1657)
Harvey was an English physician who made one of the most important discoveries in the history of medicine:
- In 1628, he published De Motu Cordis ("On the Motion of the Heart") — proving that blood circulates around the body, pumped by the heart.
- Galen had taught that blood was constantly produced in the liver, flowed outward through veins, and was consumed by the body. Harvey proved this was wrong.
- Harvey's evidence:
- He calculated the volume of blood pumped by the heart — far too much to be constantly produced and consumed
- He observed that valves in veins only allowed blood to flow in one direction (towards the heart)
- He conducted experiments: tying ligatures (tight bandages) around arms showed blood pooling on one side, proving it flowed in one direction
- He dissected live cold-blooded animals to observe the heart pumping
Significance:
- Harvey proved Galen wrong on a fundamental point and established that the heart was a pump, not a source of heat.
- However, Harvey could not explain how blood passed from arteries to veins (he did not have a microscope). Capillaries were discovered by Marcello Malpighi in 1661.
- Harvey's discovery had little immediate impact on treatment — bloodletting continued for another 200 years.
The Great Plague (1665)
The Great Plague of London (1665) killed approximately 100,000 people (about 25% of London's population) and showed that, despite the advances of Vesalius and Harvey, medical practice had changed very little:
Beliefs about Causes
- Miasma (bad air) remained the most common explanation
- God's punishment for sin
- Some believed it was spread by contact with infected people or animals
Responses
| Response | Detail |
|---|---|
| Quarantine | Infected houses were locked and marked with a red cross and "Lord have mercy upon us"; inhabitants confined for 40 days |
| Plague doctors | Wore beaked masks filled with herbs and flowers (to combat miasma) |
| Fires and smoking | Fires were lit in streets; people smoked tobacco to "purify" the air |
| Killing animals | The Lord Mayor ordered the killing of dogs and cats (ironically, cats killed the rats that carried the fleas) — 40,000 dogs and 200,000 cats were destroyed |
| Searchers of the dead | Women inspected corpses to determine cause of death |
| Fleeing the city | The wealthy (including King Charles II) left London. Samuel Pepys recorded the exodus in his diary |
| Bills of Mortality | Weekly published lists of deaths — an early form of public health data |
Comparison with the Black Death (1348)
The responses to the Great Plague were remarkably similar to those of the Black Death over 300 years earlier: prayer, miasma theory, quarantine, herbal remedies. This shows that while anatomical knowledge had improved (Vesalius, Harvey), understanding of disease causation had not fundamentally changed.
Key Exam Points
- Vesalius and Harvey are examples of individuals who advanced medical knowledge through observation and experimentation.
- However, their discoveries had limited short-term impact on treatment — a key distinction.
- The Great Plague shows the gap between anatomical knowledge and practical medicine in this period.