It wasn’t until the latter half of the 13th century that human dissections became acceptable in Italy. Previously, both the Roman Empire and Islamic law had prevented the dissection of humans and its depiction. While the Greek surgeon Galen’s anatomical drawings from the second century had been preserved and studied until the Renaissance, they were largely based on dissections of animals, such as apes.
In the mid-16th century, however, famed Flemish anatomist Andreas Vesalius dissected the bodies of executed criminals—not an uncommon practice in that period—while studying in Paris. He realized that Galen had been “misled” by apes, whose anatomy was not exactly like that of humans.
“The challenge of anatomy is rendering the 3-D experience of opening bodies onto a 2-D page,” writes Hannah Marcus, a science historian at Harvard University, in an email to The Scientist. Lack of refrigeration also presented a challenge. In overcoming those hurdles to ...
