Methods of Treatment
Choosing a Weapon

Our means for treating cancer, including chemotherapy, evolved over time as the work of scientists opened up new understandings of disease and new techniques for responding to them. Rapid developments in the treatment of disease began in the Renaissance, especially with the work of Vesalius in the 1500s.

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Andreas Vesalius, who was born in what is now Belgium, came from a family of physicians and pharmacists. At the age of nineteen, Vesalius started medical studies at the University of Paris. In these studies, he learned to study anatomy through the dissection of animals. More important, Vesalius began to investigate the anatomy of the human body through dissections as well. For his observations, he used bones and cadavers that he obtained from the cemeteries of Paris. Just a few years later, Vesalius became a lecturer at the University of Padua in Italy—a school long famous for medical learning. He was responsible for teaching those medical students the anatomy of the human body. It was in this teaching that Vesalius made his bold contributions to the scientific understanding of the human body, its processes, and disease.

In Vesalius's day, the writings of Galen—an important ancient physician from the days of the Roman Empire—were considered to be the last word in the understanding of human anatomy. To know human anatomy was to know what Galen had written on the subject. Vesalius made a remarkable break with this tradition of medical learning in 1540. He set out to learn human anatomy for himself, and teach it to his students, based upon his own observations of dissections of human cadavers that he conducted with his own hands and eyes. Moreover, Vesalius criticized the writings of Galen based on what he discovered in his own dissections and observations. Indeed, Vesalius made a striking critique of Galen's work—work that had been taken as unshakable truth. Vesalius concluded that Galen had based his writings on human anatomy from dissections of animals, the dissection of human cadavers being outlawed in the Roman Empire. This break with tradition, and this challenge of observation to received wisdom, opened up the study of human health, disease, and biology through observation and experiment.

In the centuries following Vesalius, scientists and medical practitioners continued to make important strides in the understanding and treatment of disease, historical steps that continue today. Some of these major steps include:

• Discovery of cells and their internal workings and structure
• Understanding of chemistry and its application to living systems
• Application of statistical methods to medicine
• Development of anesthesia
• Discovery of the relationship between microbes and disease
• Understanding of genetics and inheritance
• Knowledge of the immune system
• Development of body imaging
• Discovery of antimicrobial agents
• Development of molecular pharmacology