Before Vesalius in the early 16th century, knowledge of human anatomy was based essentially on guesswork. Medical students learned human anatomy not by studying bodies and dissecting them, but by reading the works of the Roman physician. As Vesalius proceeded with his dissections, he increasingly noted obvious conflicts between what he saw in the human body and what the romans described. Their errors, Vesalius reasoned, arose because the ancient anatomist relied only on animal dissections, which often did to human anatomy. Vesalius set down the principle that true, fundamental medical knowledge must come from human dissection, practiced by each individual physician.
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