In Folio: Rare Volumes in the Stanford University Libraries

Andreas Vesalius, 1514-1564.

De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem.

Basileae: Ex officina Joannis Oporini, 1543.

Vesalius began his study of medicine just as the works of Galen (b. 129 A.D.), the greatest figure in Greek medicine since Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.), were becoming widely disseminated in Renaissance Europe. Galen’s interests lay in philosophy and philology as well as biology and medicine, and it was through Galen that Greek medicine was passed down to the Reniassance. Many of Galen’s errors were not corrected until Vesalius issued his work: though Vesalius held Galen in high esteem, he was aware that Galen had been limited to the use of animals for anatomical research. Vesalius was fortunate enough to have the use of both animals and humans, and after years of research, he issued this masterpiece, De Humani Corporis Fabrica, a thorough anatomical and physiological study of every part of the human body. The illustrations are splendid and established new standards for anatomical illustration. Generally ascribed to an artist from the Titian school, the illustrations were used in the second edition of De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1555) and copied or used in other treatises on anatomy through the end of the eighteenth century.

 

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