VESALIUS: MEDICAL EDUCATION AND THE RENAISSANCE OF ANATOMY THE UNIVERSITY OF PADUA

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This article examines medical teaching and the renaissance of anatomy, centered on the University of Padua. Founded in 1222, the University became one of the leading European centers of medical and scientific education, recognized as the "cradle of modern medicine" and distinguished by its tradition of academic freedom, expressed in the motto Universa universis patavina libertas. The Paduan medical-surgical tradition dates back to the thirteenth century and was progressively consolidated by anatomists such as Bruno da Longobucco, Pietro d'Abano, Alessandro Achillini, and Niccolò Massa. In 1595, the first permanent anatomical theater in the world was inaugurated in the Palazzo del Bo. Padua also hosted Galileo Galilei and, in the eighteenth century, Morgagni, who founded modern anatomical pathology.The main focus is Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564), professor of anatomy and surgery at Padua from 1537. Breaking with traditional teaching practices, Vesalius personally performed dissections of human cadavers and critically confronted Galen's texts with direct observation of the body. In 1543, he published the De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem, regarded as a founding landmark of modern anatomy, comprising seven books and more than 200 illustrations from Titian's school, above all by Stefan van Calcar. Through systematic human dissection, he corrected numerous errors perpetuated by the Galenic tradition, demonstrating, among other aspects, that the human mandible constitutes a single bone and that the sternum presents three parts. His work transformed anatomical teaching by conferring primacy on direct observation and demonstration on the cadaver, decisively contributing to the consolidation of anatomy as a discipline grounded in empirical investigation. Vesalius died in 1564, on the island of Zakynthos, during the return from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, under circumstances still debated by historiography.

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