Education of the vascular surgeon has changed as the field itself has developed. Training now exists where there was none. Essentials of such training have been set and educational programs have developed to encompass those essentials. As this has occurred, vascular surgical training has bettered general surgical education and has not detracted from it. In the words of Goethe, “The history of the world must be rewritten from time to time, not because many events of the past are being rediscovered, but because new vistas are opening up, new ways of looking at things which show the past in a different light”.