Two things favored him--an insatiate desire to see and handle for himself the parts of the human frame, and an opportunity, such as had never before been offered to the teacher, to obtain material for the study of human anatomy.

Learned with all the learning of the Grecians and of the Arabians, Vesalius grasped, as no modern before him had done, the cardinal fact that to know the human machine and its working, it is necessary first to know its parts--its fabric.
To appreciate the work of this great man we must go back in a brief review of the growth of the study of anatomy.
Among the Greeks only the Alexandrians knew human anatomy.

What their knowledge was we know at second hand, but the evidence is plain that they knew a great deal.

Galen's anatomy was first-class and was based on the Alexandrians and on his studies of the ape and the pig.

We have already noted how much superior was his osteology to that of Mundinus.
Between the Alexandrians and the early days of the School of Salernum we have no record of systematic dissections of the human body.