Rosicrucian Beacon Magazine - 2012-09 - AMORC

Andreas Vesalius illustrated by Stephan Van Calcar (inset)CassiodorusThe medical textbooks of the great Flemishanatomist Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) were illustratedby Stephan van Calcar, a pupil of the great artist Titian(c.1488-1576). Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) mademore than a thousand anatomical sketches for anencyclopaedia planned by his young medical friend,Marco Antonio della Torre. Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528),after an intensive study of the human body, drew a selfportraitshowing exactly where the illness that later killedhim was located. And it is to the immortal Leonardo daVinci that we owe the still popular phrase, “A man isonly as old as his arteries.”The medical profession is certainly a combinationof medicine and art, and the old Chinese saying“One picture is worth a thousand words” provesthat it would be almost impossible to teachmedicine without pictures. The first portrait ofa doctor was a monument erected by PharaohSahura of the 5 th dynasty, c.2550 BCE. Itspurpose was to honour his chief physician for ‘curing hisnostrils’. A Philistine statue to Baal-Zebub, the Lord ofFlies, reveals in its script the ancient belief that insectsspread disease. Two thousand years later it was provedthat flies spread sleeping-sickness, that mosquitoes carrymalaria, and that ticks and lice cause many illnesses. Thestatue did indeed not lie!In the 5 th century BCE, one of Greece’s greatestdoctors, Cassiodorus, recommended the use of picturesin the study of medicine. He advocated the principles ofHippocrates (c.460-370 BCE), the ‘Father of Medicine’,and the herbals of Dioscorides (c.40-90 CE), one ofour earliest botanists. Both left illustrated texts for theirfollowers to use in their medical pursuits, but while hisadvice was employed for the learning of medicinal plants,it wasn’t until the 12 th century CE that anatomical chartswere used for visual instruction. By the end of the 15 thcentury artists and doctors worked together to increasetheir mutual knowledge of anatomy. Plastic surgeryPlastic surgery had its beginnings at this time too,but until modern psychologists were able to proveits effects on personality and general healthhad its beginnings at this time too, but until modernpsychologists were able to prove its effects on personalityand general health, it remained a costly and painfulremedy for lost beauty.Artists have both immortalised and lampoonedthe medical profession. The Dutch painter and etcher42The Rosicrucian Beacon -- September 2012