I profess both to learn and to teach anatomy, not from books but from dissections; not from positions of philosophers but from the fabric of nature.

William Harvey (1578–1657), physician to St Bartholomew’s Hospital and later to King Charles I, built his reputation by insisting that anatomy and physiology be grounded in direct observation. The sentiment in this quotation reflects the methodological stance he adopted in the early 17th century while challenging inherited Galenic and scholastic doctrines. Harvey’s major work on the circulation of the blood was argued from vivisection, dissection, and experiment rather than from textual authority. The line is commonly associated with his programmatic statements to readers and students about learning “from dissections” and from nature itself, a hallmark of the emerging experimental medicine of his period.

The quote contrasts two ways of knowing: deference to books and philosophers versus empirical study of bodies. Harvey presents anatomy as a craft of seeing—knowledge produced by cutting, observing, and reasoning from what nature “fabricates,” not by repeating authoritative positions. The pairing “learn and teach” also signals a reform of medical pedagogy: instruction should be demonstrative and evidence-led. In a broader intellectual sense, the statement aligns Harvey with early modern scientific method, where claims about living systems must be tested against observable structures and functions. It encapsulates his challenge to tradition and his confidence that nature, properly examined, is a more reliable text than inherited doctrine.