阅读理解 Galen, Andress Veaslius, and William Harvey were important figures in the history of man'' s study of his own body. Galen, a Greek who practiced medicine in Rome in the second century A.D. , contributed immeasurably to the understanding of anatomy (解剖学). His dissections (解剖) were limited to Barbary apes, however, because Roman religious and philosophical attitudes made experimentation on the human body unthinkable. Even so, his reputation was so outstanding and his conclusions were so logical that his writings on anatomy and physiology were accepted by medical men for more than a thousand years. Vesalius, a Belgian who went to Paris to study medicine, made the first major successful challenge of the teachings and the theories of Galen. Vesalius shocked his professors by proposing that knowledge of human anatomy should be learned from human bodies. No one took him seriously because there was a French law prohibiting dissection of the human body. Vesalius, nevertheless, conducted research in secret. When he published his book on human anatomy in 1543, medical scientists criticized him for daring to attack the writings of Galen. Eighty-five years later, an English physician named Harvey published a book that disproved Galen''s theory of blood circulation. Although Harvey'' s explanation was not universally accepted at the time, medical men of today credit him with one of the greatest advances in medical history.