Medical Renaissance - Factors - Protestant Reformation

Protestant Reformation

The Reformation of the Roman Catholic Church during this time was itself due to many things, including the perception of corruption within the Church. The ideas of Galen, a Greek physician of the 2nd century AD, were enforced and adopted by the Church; Galen was a Monotheist and his ideas did not question any of the Church's, additionally his ideas had been the accepted wisdom of the medical world for over a thousand years; anyone who went against these ideas were either punished or suppressed, and that was unlikely considering that the Church controlled the teachings that went on inside the medical profession and universities. Individuals such as Vesalius (see below) found it very difficult to overcome such opposition and were forced to dissect human subjects in secret, because it was banned. However once they began investigating they found things which challenged Galen's theories on the human body, because Galen had only been able to dissect animals. In 1531 Johannes Guinter published a Latin translation of 'On Anatomical Procedures', written by Galen, in which he stressed the need to dissect human bodies, bringing to light a previously unknown approval of human dissection. This discovery would prove vital in the lifting of the ban on human dissections. Thanks to the recent invention of the printing press (see above), news of the discoveries made by individuals such as Vesalius was impossible for the Church to stop spreading, having been severely weakened by the Reformation.