In the 16(th) and 17(th) centuries, medical knowledge was anthropological in so much as it produced a discourse on man whose ambition and legitimacy needed no justification. Underwritten by the belief that the body was an object of science, the epistemic horizons of a doctrina de homine emerged from the interaction of medical practice, particularly anatomy, with philosophy and theology in a specific framework - the reorganization of knowledge in Europe over the "long 16(th) century".