Antall József szerk.: Pictures from the Past of the Healing Arts / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 5. (Budapest, 1972)
Pictures from the Past of the Healing Arts (Guide for the Exhibition)
1 8 press in Basle. The epochmaking work of 663 folios and 300 woodcuts was published first in 1543. The chief significance of Vesalius is that he cleared anatomy of the false, unwarrantable Galenic theories that still prevailed, which were based only on analogies of animal-dissections. Special mention should be made of the artist, who made the drawings and whose person is still a question under discussion. By all probability he was an artist called Jan Stephan van Calcar (1499-1546), a Dutchman belonging to the school of Titian. According to some scholars Titian himself might have had a hand in the illustrations. In the exhibition we displayed an edition of Vesalius's masterpiece, published in Nuremberg in 1551. In front of it you can see an anatomical figure carved in wood from the I7th-i8th centuries (Fig. 13.). The two precious ivory figures next to it are worthy of mention, too : they are sectional ancillary objects used in the teaching of obstetrics. Their anatomical structure - analysed from a medicohistorical point of view - reveals pre-Vesalian knowledge but according to their style they belong to the middle of the 17th century. They were made by Stephan Zick (1639-1715), a famous master of ivory carving in Nuremberg (Fig. 14.). In the background of the show-case you can see the diploma of medicine of Valerius Bellatus , granted him in Venice in 1575. Medals of Vesalius , Nicolaus Tulp (who appears in the famous painting of Rembrandt ) and Girolamo Fracastoro complete the material of this showcase. b) The Discovery of Blood-Circulation Galen (130-200 A.D.) a court physician of Emperor Marcus Aurelius" whose genius inspired medicine for one and a half thousand years but whose great influence at the same time barred the way to progress" - recognized blood moved in the arteries but did not solve the question of circulation completely. Erroneously he considered the liver the central organ of the vascular system and the producer of fresh blood. He also believed that the blood could pass through the separating heart wall (from the right ventricle into the left ventricle). He described the movement of the blood and the arteries quite correctly, but did not recognize the continuous circulation of blood. Galen's physiological system is shown in a diagram. Another forerunner of the discovery of blood-circulation was Miguel Serve rn (1511-1553). Spanish physician and theologian who discovered the lesser (pulmonary) circulation. It became known in 1924, however, that it was Ibn an-Nafis (1210-1288) Arabic physician of the 13th century "who first said that the interventricular septum is solid and referred to the pulmonary circulation". The anatomical interest of the University of Padua, preserving Vesalius's heritage, greatly contributed to the discovery of blood circulation. William Harvey's (1578-1657) professor at Cambridge was Caius, a pupil of Vesalius. He went to Padua at Caius ' advice where he obtained the title of Doctor of Medi-
