Medical Renaissance

The Medical Renaissance started as the regular Renaissance did in the early 1400s and ended in the late 1600s. During this time great medical personalities and scholar humanists made unique advances to medicine and surgery. Linacre, Erasmus, Leonicello and Sylvius will be considered first, because they fit the early classic Renaissance period. Andreas Vesalius and Ambroise Paré followed thereafter, making outstanding anatomical contributions with the publication of the "Human Factory" (1543) by Vesalius, and describing unique surgical developments with the publication of the "The Apologie and Treatise of Ambroise Paré." At the end of the Renaissance and beginning of the New Science, William Harvey, noted British medical doctor and cardiovascular researcher, discovered the general circulation. He published his findings in "The Motu Cordis" in 1628 (Figure 1). The Medical Renaissance, in summary, included a great number of accomplished physicians and surgeons who made especial contributions to human anatomy; Vesalius assembled detailed anatomical information; Paré advanced surgical techniques; and Harvey, a medical genius, detailed the circulatory anatomy and physiology.