Pirates or Paranoia? Why Vesalius published the Fabrica in Basel, Switzerland

Vesalius was highly involved with the publication of the Fabrica. He oversaw each aspect of the manuscript's preparation, spending a great deal of his own money and time to ensure that every detail was executed according to his vision. One of the more curious decisions he made was to have the woodblock illustrations for the work cut in Venice and then shipped over the Alps to be printed in Basel, Switzerland by Johannes Oporinus.

Why not have the Fabrica printed in Venice? Venice was a center for publishing, printing more titles per year than any other European city (Clark, 1981). From a technical standpoint, a Venetian printer would have been just as capable of printing the book as Oporinus. Moreover, the journey from Venice to Basel took several weeks, was quite costly and put the woodblocks at not insignificant risk of damage in transit. What prompted Vesalius's decision?

In a word: pirates. Vesalius had been burned before by the pirating of his work, losing sales to the cheap, illegal and inferior copies that seemed to crop up almost immediately after the publication of his previous anatomical studies (Saunders & O'Malley, 1950). Vesalius was banking on the Fabrica making his reputation and possibly, his fortune. He wanted to minimize the risk of poorly done pirated copies getting in the way of either goal by distributing his book as quickly as possible (Clark, 1981). But, Venice had a strict licensing program; all newly published books had to be approved by state censors, which could be a time-consuming process. Venice was also in a poor position geographically to quickly distribute books to Northern Europe. Printing in Venice meant delays in distribution that Vesalius could ill afford if he wanted to beat the pirates in getting an authentic copy of the Fabrica out to all European markets.

Basel was ideally situated for Vesalius's purposes. It was centrally located along a trade route between Italy and Germany, enabling relatively quick distribution to the universities in Italy and the major bookfairs in France and Germany (Clark, 1981). Basel was also a center for Humanist thought where Vesalius could rest assured that his work would be treated with the respect and attention it deserved.

Vesalius's initial investment of effort and funds paid off. It was nearly two years after the official publication of the Fabrica before the first unauthorized copies of the Fabrica appeared. By that time, Vesalius had already been offered a position at court and the controversy surrounding the book and its challenge to Galen, had gained it widespread readership if not exactly universal respect.