At the beginning of the sixteenth century, European scholars could gain only a basic understanding of the anatomy of humans and animals. At a handful of universities where students trained in medicine—such as Bologna or Paris—professors read from the books of the Greek physician Galen. Galen had combined the philosophical work of Aristotle and other Greeks with his own lifetime of dissections, creating a system that explained not just the structure of the human body, but how the body worked. His work was believed to be unblemished and ideal world wide, it was not until Andreas Vesalius came along in 1543, publishing a book, basically destroying many of Galen’s theories. Vesalius himself was a strong defender of the “Galenism” beliefs while