比盖伦还盖伦——维萨里《书简》的内容和意义

More Galen than Galen:The Content and Significance of Vesalius’China root epistle

维萨里坚信,真理来源于对眼前对象的直接的解剖和观察,而不是伟大的前人或他们的经典文献。在自称自己是比盖伦还盖伦的“盖伦主义者”之后,维萨里于1543年出版了自己在解剖学上的颠覆之作《人体结构论》。由于暴怒的盖伦派学者担心其在医学上的影响像马丁·路德对宗教的影响一样,因此维萨里也被称作为“医学中的路德”。然而,包括西方医学史在内的世界医学史同行,长期仅对其于1946年出版的《中国根书简》中关于中国根部分进行译介,却对维萨里在书中大篇幅反驳塞尔维斯关于盖伦不会有错的观点及其“追求真理”的原因和方法选择性地忽略。事实上,“中国根”部分仅占《中国根书简》全书内容的1/5,全书大部分内容是借中国根而阐述其于《人体结构论》中未尽之思想。维萨里在近代西方医学革命中究竟占有怎样的地位,完全可从包含其充分思想的《中国根书简》中得以明晰。

Vesalius firmly believed that truth came from the direct dissection and observation of the object in front of him,not from the great predecessors or their classic texts.After calling himself a“Galenist”who was more Galen than Galen,Vesalius published his anatomically subversive“De Humani Corporis Fabrica”in 1543.Vesalius has also been called“the Luther of Medicine”,as furious Galenists feared that it would have the same effect on medicine as Martin Luther had on religion.However,colleagues in the history of medicine in the world,including the history of Western medicine,for a long time only translated and introduced the part about Chinese root in the book“The China root epistle”published in 1946,but they refuted Vesalius in the book at length.Weiss’s argument that Galen is infallible and the selective omission of the causes and methods of his“search for truth”.In fact,the“Chinese Root”part only accounts for one-fifth of the content of the“The China root epistle”,and most of the content of the book is based on the Chinese roots to expound its unfinished thoughts in“The Structure of the Human Body”.What position Vesalius occupied in the modern Western medical revolution can be completely clarified from the China root epistle,which contains his full thoughts.