Andreas Vesalius

Digitized facsimile of the 1543 Basel edition in the Warnock Library.

This title recreates the masterpiece of science and art for the first time in a way that is understandable to 21st century readers who do not have any knowledge of Latin. The texts of both the 1543 and the 1555 editions have been translated with the utmost care by Northwestern University Professors Emeritus Daniel H. Garrison and Malcolm H. Hast, a task they completed in over 20 years of painstaking and dedicated work. Annotations give the reader keen insight into just how innovative 'De humani corporis fabrica' was, and high-resolution digital scans of the almost 300 woodcuts provide the images with a sharpness they never had before.

The beautiful and revolutionary work of Andreas Vesalius has long been regarded as a milestone in the history of medical science and art. The great 16th- century physician not only established the basis of modern anatomy but created eloquent drawings of great scientific exactness and published them in books that were marvels of elegant organization and printing. Those drawings have been reproduced here in all their beauty and precision. -- Publisher description

"In this work on the discovery and therapeutic use of the china root in the treatment of syphilis, Vesalius described the first attempt to formulate methods of identification of an exotic drug. He also offered physicians an opportunity to determine whether or not a drug coming into common use might be adulterated. The work contains Vesalius's defense of his anatomical methods and doctrines as described in the Fabrica (No. 375), as well as important autobiographical data."--Garrison & Morton (1991)