Human anatomy Bones Freaks Commentary

Andreas Vesalius anatomy

Human anatomy

• Andreas Vesalius broke with medieval practice
• by doing his own dissections in front of students
• and found that Galen, in the second century A.D.,
• dissected dogs and monkeys instead of humans.
• A human’s lower jaw is one bone, not two as Galen said,
• and a human sternum has three parts, not like an ape with its seven.
• Vesalius accepted Galen’s theory of the circulation of the blood,
• although he admitted he could not find holes between the heart’s ventricles.
• He found that men and women had the same number of ribs,
• and published illustrations of partially dissected human bodies in dramatic poses.

Bones

• Ezekiel cried, dem bones
• gonna walk around.
• With a knick-knack paddywhack,
• give the dog a bone.
• Work, work, work,
• work your fingers to the bone.
• Sticks and stones
• may break my bones.
• Make no bones about it;
• we’re only bags of bones.
• Bones, bones, human bones
• piled up in the catacombs.
• Bones don’t lie;
• there lie the bones.

Freaks

• Hooray for freaks whose
• hearts are on their right.
• Maybe they might teach us
• not to judge by sight.
• Hooray for freaks who
• accept us as we are.
• To think outside the box
• might not be so bizarre.
• Hooray for people who
• are not like you and me.
• If we cut them open
• it wouldn’t help us see.