Introduction

Andreas Vesalius's exhaustive anatomical study of the human body, De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem invites superlatives. Published in 1543, it is easily the most famous, most influential and most beautiful anatomical work ever created. With more than 200 magnificently detailed woodblock illustrations, the Fabrica combines scientific method, text, illustration and typography in a wholly new way that revolutionized the study of anatomy, elevating Vesalius to the ranks of physicians like Hippocrates, Galen and Lister and earning him the title: Father of Modern Anatomy.

Beyond the field of medicine, the Fabrica stands on its own as a masterpiece of book art and Renaissance ideals. It remains a prized possession today, holding an honored place in the rare book collections of over 100 libraries worldwide (Nutton, 2003). The sole fully colored copy, each woodcut illustration hand-painted by a skilled miniaturist, sold at a Christie's auction for over 1.6 million dollars in the mid-1990s (Christie's, 1998). This dollar value gives some sense of the significance of the Fabrica; this study will consider the book in depth to give a more complete picture of its importance.

Historical Context: The Renaissance, Humanism and the Birth of Modern Anatomy

The Renaissance and Humanism

The Fabrica was written and published at the height of the Renaissance, in the early 1540s. It is a spectacular example of Renaissance scholarship and art that exemplifies the ideals of the age. While too extraordinary to be called typical, every aspect from the subject matter to the language used to the quality of the production speak to the work's historical moment.

The Renaissance was both an historical age and a cultural movement. It marks the period of transition from the Middle Ages to Modernity and was characterized by a particular attitude towards learning and intellectual pursuit. Renaissance means rebirth in French and this time saw the cultural rebirth of Europe. During the Middle Ages, because of the primacy of the Church, scholarship, and learning in general, had turned away from the secular. The works of many ancient Greek and Roman scholars had fallen to the wayside. The Renaissance revived interest in Classical learning and sources, which in turn prompted its own great explosion of original scholarly and artistic output.

At the heart of this cultural movement was the philosophy of Humanism, which sought to create an informed, enlightened citizenry by encouraging education, in particular the study of the humanities. Out of Humanism came the now familiar concept of the “Renaissance Man,” a person who is well-educated with a broad base of general knowledge and expertise across a number of disciplines and who is relentlessly self-improving. Vesalius was reared and educated in the Humanist tradition and the Fabrica is, as this book study will demonstrate, a decidedly Humanist work, written in a Humanist style, by a Renaissance man and marketed to other Renaissance men or aspiring Renaissance men.

Anatomy Pre-Vesalius


At the time Vesalius wrote the Fabrica, the supreme authority in the study of human anatomy was Galen, a Greek physician who lived in the 2nd century AD. Although centuries had passed since Galen had written his major anatomical text Anatomical Procedures, his description of the human body was considered definitive. Galen's authority was curious as he lived in a time when human dissection was prohibited so his work is based primarily on the dissection of animals, supplemented by the study of human skeletons and the brief glimpses he had of human internal structures from his work as a physician (O'Malley, 1964).

By the time Vesalius was studying medicine in the 1530s, dissection was still a relatively infrequent occurrence. Knowledge of anatomy was required to earn a medical degree, but it was learned mainly through lecture, textbooks and study of bones. Dissection was considered a surgeon's tool and surgeons at this time had a poor reputation as mere technicians rather than true scholars. While Vesalius was studying at the University of Paris, he may have seen three or four human dissections at the most (Saunders & O'Malley, 1950).

Dissection had not been outlawed outright during the Middle Ages as it had been by the Romans, but the practice was socially unacceptable and frowned upon by the Church. By the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, dissection happened on occasion but cadavers were hard to come by and the practice was not part of formal medical education or viewed as an avenue for new discovery. Rather, it was a means to experience firsthand what Galen and other early physicians had described in their anatomies (O'Malley, 1964). If discrepancies were discovered in the process, it was put down to poor translations of the original works or corrupted versions of texts (Nutton, 2003). Rather than challenging these classical scholars, Renaissance scholars sought purer texts.

It wasn't until 1514 that Galen's works were translated directly from the Greek (Saunders & O'Malley, 1950). The publication prompted renewed interest in anatomy and by the 1520s more and more universities were incorporating dissection into their medical programs. More direct translations of classical medical texts followed, but it is perhaps this first landmark translation that paved the way for Vesalius's Fabrica.

Image of Galen a lithograph by Pierre Roche Vigneron. (Paris: Lith de Gregoire et Deneux, ca. 1865).

The Author: Andreas Vesalius

Andreas Vesalius was born in Brussels either in the last few hours of 1514 or the first few of 1515 (Nutton, 2003). He came from a family of prominent physicians, fifth in a chain of fathers passing on the medical profession to their sons (Fisch, 1943a); his father held a position at court as the apothecary to Emperor Charles V.

As a young man, Vesalius received an elite Humanist education. In 1528, he first left Brussels to attend the Castle School at the University of Louvain where he followed the typical course of study for a wealthy young man of the time, which focused on rhetoric, philosophy and logic. From there he decided to follow the family tradition and study Medicine, leaving in 1533 for the University of Paris, the top medical school in northern Europe. When war broke out in 1536 between France and the emperor, Vesalius was forced to leave Paris before he could finish his degree. He completed his medical studies at the University of Louvain and took his MD examinations in Padua in 1537.

By the end of those first years studying medicine, Vesalius had already managed to earn a reputation for his skill as a dissector (Saunders & O’Malley, 1950). Because practical dissection was neither taught to students nor highly valued as a skill, Vesalius had to learn the art by his own initiative. He practiced dissecting animals on his own time. And, if this story recounted in Saunders and O’Malley’s (1950) introduction to their The Illustrations from the Works of Andreas Vesalius of Brussels is at all indicative, Vesalius probably did not scruple from making his own opportunities to practice on the real deal:

While out walking, looking for bones in the place where on the country highways eventually, to the great convenience of students, all those who have been executed are customarily placed, I happened upon a dried cadaver . . . I climbed the stake and pulled off the femur from the hip bone. While tugging at the specimen, the scapulae together with the arms and hands also followed, although the fingers of one hand, both patellae and one foot were missing. After I had brought the legs and arms home in secret and successive trips (leaving the head behind with the entire trunk of the body, I allowed myself to be shut out of the city in the evening in order to obtain the thorax which was firmly held by a chain. I was burning with so great a desire . . . that I was not afraid to snatch in the middle of the night what I so longed for. (p. 14)

In any event, Vesalius’s reputation as a dissector and student of anatomy was such that, upon passing his exams, he was immediately offered a faculty position at the University of Padua.

As a professor at the university, Vesalius became a vocal champion for the art of dissection, making it a regular part of his lectures. At the time, it was unusual for professors to perform their own dissections, but Vesalius made a name for himself by descending from the professor’s lectern to personally dissect and demonstrate on all of his own cadavers. His lectures became so popular that students, professors and educated members of the public alike crowded his dissection theatre. He introduced a further innovation by augmenting his demonstrations with large, detailed illustrations and charts, which he went on to publish. While many leading physicians opposed these illustrated anatomies, claiming that it “had not been done in classical times and would degrade scholarship” (Saunders & O’Malley, 1950, p. 16), they quickly became popular study aids among students and pirated versions appeared throughout Europe. In these early publications, with their use of high-quality, detailed illustrations and findings about human anatomy gleaned from direct observation, the germ of Vesalius’s great work, the Fabrica is evident.

Vesalius likely began work on the Fabrica in the winter of 1539-1540, completing it in the summer of 1542, and publishing it a year later. With more than 80,000 words and over 200 illustrations, it is a massive work to have been completed in such a short time and by such a young man; Vesalius was just 28 years old when it was published. The work put forth two radical ideas: first, that Galen’s anatomy, which had been considered authoritative, was deeply flawed because Galen had primarily used nonhuman sources; and second, knowledge of human anatomy could only be gained through direct observation of the human body, chiefly by means of dissection. These challenges to the status quo were met with resistance and the initial response to the Fabrica was so poor that Vesalius tragically burned all of his notes for the work and all the materials he was preparing for future publications in a fit of disappointment (Saunders & O'Malley, 1950).

Vesalius and the Fabrica had some powerful admirers though. It was published in June of 1543 and shortly thereafter, Vesalius was granted an audience with the emperor, Charles V. At this meeting, Vesalius presented the emperor, to whom the Fabrica is dedicated, with a specially prepared, illuminated copy of the book with each illustration hand-painted by a highly skilled miniaturist. The emperor was so impressed that he immediately took Vesalius on as a court physician.

As a member of the court, Vesalius was expected to give up his work as a scholar and maintain a low profile. It is unclear why Vesalius chose this route. Perhaps, it had always been his intention and the Fabrica was a simply a means to an end. Court held many attractions, among them wealth, prestige and a chance to mingle with the great minds of the age. It also was an opportunity to actually practice medicine and Vesalius had always been interested in becoming a complete physician, skilled in the surgical arts (Saunders & O’Malley, 1950). Whatever his reasons might have been, by accepting the emperor's offer, Vesalius essentially gave up his research at the height of his academic career. While his life at court was eventful and Vesalius gained respect across Europe as a physician, none of his later achievements ever matched that of the Fabrica.

In 1564, for mysterious reasons, Vesalius made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. On his return, he was caught in a storm and shipwrecked on a Greek island where he fell ill and at just 50 years of age, died. Vesalius's body was buried on the island and there is perhaps something fitting about Vesalius making his final resting place in the homeland of Galen, to whom he owed so much.

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.

The Printer: Johannes Oporinus

Johannes Oporinus (1507-1568) was a prominent Renaissance printer, but not the best printer of his day by any means. There were others in Basel alone who surpassed his skill in design and typography (Fisch, 1943b), but there are several reasons why Vesalius would select Oporinus above other more talented printers to print the Fabrica.

Perhaps most importantly, Oporinus was a Humanist scholar. He had a classical education and was an expert in Greek, Latin and Hebrew, all three of which Velsalius used in the Fabrica. Oporinus had actually taught Latin and Greek at the University of Basel, rising through the ranks to become dean of the liberal arts college until a change in the education requirements for professors forced him to decide between earning his doctorate or pursuing another profession. He chose to leave academia to embark on a career in publishing. Because of his ties to academia though, Oporinus became the printer of choice for scholars, partly because he had a reputation for careful proofing of the works he printed, reviewing each work personally and with scholarly attention (Fisch, 1943b), and partly because he used his ties to the academic world to network tirelessly. As Max Fisch (1943b) writes, the secret to his success was due in large part to:

his many-sided connections in the learned world, which led even foreign scholars to entrust their work to him rather than to printers nearer home; and the assiduity with which he encouraged young scholars to write, assisted them in their work, kept himself informed of their progress, and knocked now at this door and now at that where he knew a completed manuscript lay in a desk. (p. 247)

Vesalius belonged to this network of scholars with whom Oporinus had ties. Oporinus had worked on two of Vesalius's previous publications. He also had some medical training. He had briefly considered becoming a physician but had found the life did not suit him. His knowledge of medicine further appealed to Vesalius.

In short, Vesalius trusted Oporinus. He knew that Oporinus, more so than other printers, would understand the significance of the Fabrica and accord it the appropriate care and attention.

Oporinus's Printer's Device


Interestingly, it was actually Vesalius who suggested the remarkable printer's device that Oporinus used in the Fabrica (Fisch, 1943b), and which he would continue to use in one form or another throughout his printing career. The device depicts Arion, an ancient Greek poet and musician, riding a dolphin and playing a lyre. The story goes that Arion was sailing home to Corinth after winning a musical competition when he was beset by sailors who wanted to steal his winnings. The corrupt sailors offered Arion the choice of suicide with a proper burial on land or being thrown into the sea. To buy time, Arion asked to sing a final song. He played a song to the god Apollo and its beauty attracted dolphins, animals sacred to Apollo. Arion threw himself into the sea and was carried to shore by one of the dolphins.

A dolphin had figured in the printer's device of a well-known printer in Venice, Aldus Manutius of the Aldine Press. Manutius had been the first great printer of the classics. Fisch (1943b) suggests that Vesalius recommended the dolphin for Oporinus as a sign that the mantel of great publishing had passed from Venice to Basel and that Oporinus would prove the Manutius for the new generation of Humanist scholars.

On the device are Sibyl's words to Aeneas before his descent into Hades: invia virtuti nulla est via, valor knows no obstacle. Oporinus, whose private life was troubled and whose press was always in financial difficulties, must have clung to those words as a personal motto, finding the strength in them and in the story of Arion's rescue from a sea of troubles, to continue the difficult work of printing the finest minds of his generation.

The image of Oporinus is an engraving by Theodor de Bry (1528-1598) from Bibliotheca chalcographica di Jean-Jacques Boissard - 1669.