On the Fabric of the Human Body (Preface)

Summary

De humani corporis fabrica libri septem (Seven Books on the Fabric of the Human Body) was printed at Basel by Johannes Oporinus in 1543, when its author, Andreas Vesalius, professor at Padua, was twenty-eight. Its seven books describe the bones and cartilages, the ligaments and muscles, the veins and arteries, the nerves, the organs of nutrition and generation, the heart and the organs of the chest, and the brain and the senses. More than two hundred woodcuts, cut with great care and placed beside the text, show skeletons and flayed 'muscle men' posed in landscapes, alongside detailed views of organs and instruments. The artists were probably trained in Titian's workshop in Venice; Jan Steven van Calcar is often named, though the attribution of particular plates is debated. This library entry centres on the preface, a dedicatory letter to the Emperor Charles V, which explains why the book was needed. Vesalius argues that ancient physicians practised all three parts of medicine, diet, drugs and the work of the hands, but that later physicians kept only the prescribing of diets and remedies, leaving the preparation of medicines to apothecaries and surgery to barbers. Anatomy decayed as a result. In the universities, he complains, one man read Galen aloud from a high chair while an unlearned barber cut the body below, so that the professor, like a chattering jackdaw, spoke of things he had never examined and the dissector could not explain what he exposed. Vesalius claims he has put his own hand to dissection and found that Galen, whom he honours as the greatest of the ancient anatomists, had described the bodies of apes and other animals rather than of human beings, so that his account contains many errors. He defends the use of pictures, comparing them to the diagrams of geometry, and anticipates resistance from older Galenists. The Fabrica itself corrects Galen on points such as the human lower jaw, which it shows as a single bone, and the sternum, and it doubts that blood passes through the wall between the ventricles of the heart, a doubt stated more strongly in the revised edition of 1555. The book became the foundation of modern anatomy, though later anatomists in turn corrected Vesalius. No public-domain English translation of the preface has been identified for the library, so no text is stored and nothing is quoted here; the summary and guide describe the preface in paraphrase.

Top Lessons

• The hand and the head belong together

  Vesalius argues that medicine declined when learned physicians stopped working with their own hands and left the body to barbers. His remedy is a physician who both reads and dissects, joining book learning to direct observation.

• Honour a master by testing him

  Vesalius calls Galen the prince of anatomists even while correcting him. He presents himself not as Galen's enemy but as one returning to the ancient practice of dissection that Galen himself valued.

• Seeing is part of knowing

  The Fabrica's woodcuts were planned with the text and placed beside it. Vesalius argues that pictures, like geometric diagrams, fix in the mind what words alone cannot, and the book's images shaped anatomical illustration for centuries.

• The body as a work of wonder

  Like Galen before him, Vesalius writes of the body as a marvellous fabric, a made thing, and the title itself suggests craftsmanship. Anatomy was for him both a medical discipline and a way of contemplating the order of the human frame.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

The Fabrica is a founding text of modern anatomy and a central document in the history of surgery and medical education. The preface diagnoses a professional problem: the separation of learned physic from manual surgery and pharmacy, which left university physicians ignorant of the body and barber-surgeons without theory. Vesalius's reform, the professor who dissects with his own hands while lecturing, reshaped anatomical teaching. His argument that Galen had described animal rather than human anatomy marked a turn from textual authority to observation, though Vesalius kept much of Galen's physiology, including the humours and spirits. The Fabrica's account of the brain, nerves and sense organs in Book VII matters for the history of neuroanatomy; Vesalius found no rete mirabile at the base of the human brain, a structure Galen had described from animals and placed at the centre of the production of animal spirits. Bodies came from executed criminals, a source of anatomical material that raised ethical and legal questions in later centuries.

• Preface to Charles V

  The division of medicine among physicians, apothecaries and barbers, and its consequences for knowledge of the body.

• Preface to Charles V

  Satire of lecture-room anatomy, with the professor reading Galen from a chair while an unlearned barber dissects.

• Preface to Charles V

  Argument that Galen dissected apes and other animals, so that many of his anatomical claims do not hold for humans.

• Fabrica, Book VI

  Description of the heart and doubt that blood sweats through the septum between the ventricles, sharpened in the 1555 edition.

• Fabrica, Book VII

  The brain, its ventricles and the sense organs, including the absence in humans of the rete mirabile described by Galen.