Andreas Vesalsius was born in 1514 and died in 1564. He was born in Brabant (now part of southern Belgium). He began his schooling in Brabant at Catholic University of Leuven (1529-1533) and for the next three years afterward studied medicine at the University of Paris in France. He got his bachelor of medicine degree back at the Catholic University of Leuven. He got his M.D. at the University of Padua in Italy, which had a strong background on dissection, one of Velsalsius’s biggest interests. He did some work at the University of Bologna in Italy in which he performed his own dissections, studied anatomy, and studied ancient works. He wrote the first textbook on human anatomy while doing this work and realizing the faults in Galen’s theories of human anatomy. He got the artwork for the text done in Venice and published it in Switzerland in 1543. He then went to Mainz to present his book to the Holy Roman Emperor, who not only approved, but appointed him the physician of his household. He spent many years in Brussels with his wife while making a lot of money with his great practitioning career, and then moved to Spain after the Holy Roman emperor made him a count and promised a lifetime pension. He made a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and stopped at Venice and Cyprus along the way. He really lived and traveled throughout many places!
His biggest contribution to the history of medicine was revolutionizing the practice of medicine through his very detailed and thorough work in human anatomy and writing and illustrating the very first textbook in human anatomy. Part of the reason this work was so revolutionary was that it questioned the authoritative texts on human anatomy written by Galen, and provided much more accurate information.
All of this information I got from Britannica, which, through my critical judgement, I believe to be a reliable source.
