TO THE EMPEROR CHARLES V

...since (as the gods wish it to be moderated, not undeservedly, in later times) it had begun to revive with such happiness alongside all other studies, and to raise its head from the deepest darkness, it seemed that in some Universities it had almost recovered its old brilliance beyond controversy. Yet, it still lacked nothing more urgently than the knowledge of the parts of the human body, which had been almost completely dead. Provoked by the example of so many distinguished men, I decided that I should bring help to this cause to the best of my ability and by whatever means I could. And lest I alone should remain idle while everyone else was attempting something for the sake of our common studies with such success—or indeed, lest I should degenerate from my ancestors, who were certainly famous physicians—I thought that this branch of natural philosophy naturalis philosophiae: the study of nature and the physical universe, the precursor to modern science should be recalled from the underworld. My goal was that if dissection were not practiced more perfectly among us than ever before, it should at least reach a point where one would not be ashamed to assert that our method of dissection could be compared with that of the ancients; and that in this era, nothing has been so collapsed and then restored to its integrity as Anatomy has been.

But this study would by no means have succeeded if, while I was studying medicine at Paris, I had not applied my own hands to this business myself. I did not settle for having a few internal organs shown to me and my fellow students superficially by certain barbers In medieval and early Renaissance universities, the "physician" would read from a book while a "barber-surgeon" performed the actual cutting. Vesalius found this method inadequate. in one or two public dissections. For anatomy was handled so perfunctorily there—where we first saw medicine successfully reborn—that I had to practice by dissecting several animals on my own. Eventually, at the urging of my fellow students and teachers, I publicly performed a third dissection (which focused mainly on the internal organs, as was the custom there) more thoroughly than usual. When I attempted a second one, I tried to show the muscles of the hand along with a more accurate dissection of the organs. For, except for the eight muscles of the abdomen, which were shamefully mangled in the wrong order, no one had ever shown me a single muscle—just as they had never shown a single bone, much less the sequence of nerves, veins, and arteries.

Soon afterward, I had to return to Louvain A city in modern-day Belgium, then part of the Habsburg Netherlands. due to the disturbances of war. Because the doctors there had not even dreamed of anatomy for eighteen years, I decided to serve the students of that Academy and make myself more skilled in a matter that is hidden but absolutely necessary for all of medicine. While dissecting, I explained the human fabric humanam fabricam: the structure, "workings," or "architecture" of the human body a little more accurately than had been done in Paris. As a result, the younger professors of that Academy now seem to devote great and serious effort to identifying the parts of man, clearly understanding what excellent equipment for philosophizing the knowledge of these parts supplies them.

Furthermore, at Padua, in the most famous school in the entire world, the teaching of anatomy has fallen to me. This is because the profession of surgery was entrusted to me five years ago by the most illustrious Venetian Senate—a body by far the most generous toward the study of learning. I have devoted such effort to investigating the construction of man that I have now performed this very frequently and, having exploded the ridiculous custom of the schools, I have taught in such a way that we can lack nothing that has come down to us from the ancients.

Yet, the laziness of doctors has taken too much care that the writings of Eudemus, Herophilus, Marinus, Andreas, Lycus, and other leaders of dissection Vesalius lists legendary Greek anatomists whose works were mostly lost to history. were not preserved for us. Not even a fragment of a single page survives of so many illustrious authors, of whom Galen Galen of Pergamon (2nd century AD), the most influential medical writer until Vesalius's time. mentions more than twenty in his second commentary on Hippocrates's book On the Nature of Man. Indeed, barely half of Galen’s own anatomical books have been rescued from destruction. Those who followed Galen—in whose rank I include Oribasius, Theophilus, the Arabs, and all our own writers I have happened to read—all of them (if they will pardon me for saying so) borrowed whatever they passed on that was worth reading from him. And by Jupiter! To a studious person who is actually dissecting, nothing is ever less...