Anat Biol Anthropol.  2023 Mar;36(1):31-36. 10.11637/aba.2023.36.1.31.

On the Geometric Diagrams in Fabrica of Andreas Vesalius

• Hur MS
• Oh CS

• KMID: 2541222
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.11637/aba.2023.36.1.31

Abstract

Diverse geometric diagrams are found in the De Humani Corporis Fabrica (Fabrica) of Andreas Vesalius. The diagrams include the line, circle, semicircle, triangular and quadrangular structures. The geometric diagrams in Fabrica were extraordinary since any such one was not found in the anatomy books at the times of Fabrica publication, such as Anatomiae by Johann Dryander (1537), Anatomia Mundini by Mondino de Luzzi (1540), Anatomica by Jean Riolan (1608), Historia Anatomica Humani Corporis by Andrea Laurentio (1623). The same diagram of lines of Fabrica rather was seen in Theatrum Anatomicum by Caspar Bauhin (1605). In 1482, sixty-one years before the publication of Fabrica, the first Latin version of Euclidis Elementum was publicated in Venice, the city near Padua where Vesalis worked. The diagrams of the first page of Elementum Liber Primus appear one after another in Fabrica. Some of them are expressed by outlining the boundary of structures like bones and muscles, but others by sectioning the structures such as aorta and pulmonary trunk, dural sinuses, and parietal pleura. For expressing the semicircle, Vesalius exampled the lateral bending of spinal column. The triangular structure of sectioned parietal pleura appears only in the 1555 version, while the others in both versions of 1543 and 1555. It raises an assumption that Vesalius had consistently pursed the geometry in the structure of human body after the 1543 version of Fabrica. In consideration with the year and place of the publication of Elementum, Vesalius might have been influenced by the book, and utilized the geometric method as one of the routes for approaching to the structure of human body. The l’uomo vitruviano (Vitruvian Man) of Leonardo da Vinci was reportedly revealed after 1570, which makes it assumed for Vesalius not to have had an opportunity to see the drawing. However the methods used by two great anatomists for investigating human body seem not far away from each other in terms of searching for the geometrical significance in the structure of human body.

Keyword

Vealius; Fabrica; History of Anatomy; Eucleidis Elementum; Geometry