On the Fabric of the Human Body

TO THE EMPEROR CHARLES V

...are supported, and are described according to these, must first be known by students of Anatomy.
Summary of the second bookThe second book commemorates the ligaments, by whose benefit the bones and cartilages are connected to each other, and then the muscles, the workers of movements that depend on our will.
The thirdThe third encompasses the very frequent series of veins—which carry the familiar blood to the muscles, bones, and other parts so they may be nourished—and then the arteries, which moderate the temperature of the innate heat and the vital spirit.
The fourthThe fourth teaches not only the branches of the nerves, which carry the animal spirit In Renaissance physiology, "animal spirit" (from anima, soul/life) was thought to travel through hollow nerves to facilitate sensation and movement. to the muscles, but also all the other branches as well.
The fifthThe fifth delivers the construction of the organs serving nutrition, which is completed through food and drink; and furthermore, due to the proximity of their location, it also contains the instruments fabricated by the supreme Craftsman of things for the succession of the species referring to the reproductive organs.
The sixthThe sixth is dedicated to the heart, the hearth of the vital faculty, and to its ministering parts.
The seventhThe seventh pursues the harmony of the brain and the organs of sense in such a way that the series of nerves originating from the brain, expressed in the fourth book, is not repeated. Indeed, in arranging the order of these books, I have followed the opinion of Galen, who thought that after the history of the muscles, the anatomy of the veins, arteries, nerves, and then the viscera should be treated. Although not without reason, and especially for a beginner in this science, someone might contend that the knowledge of the viscera should be pursued along with the distribution of the vessels, just as I performed in the Epitome The Epitome was a condensed, more affordable version of Vesalius's work intended for students; which I prepared as a path to these books and an index of the things demonstrated in them, decorated with the splendor of the most serene Prince Philip, your Majesty’s son and a living exemplar of his father’s virtues.

But here the judgment of some occurs to me, who sharply condemn not only the exquisite delineations of herbs, but also those of the parts of the human body being proposed to students of natural things; because they say these should be learned not by pictures, but by diligent dissection refectione: literally "remaking" or "repairing," here referring to the act of dissecting to see the structure and the intuition of the things themselves. This is as if I had added these most true icons of the parts to the context of the discourse—which I hope will never be corrupted by the printers—on the grounds that students, relying on them, might refrain from the sectioning of bodies; rather, I have added them so that I might encourage candidates of medicine by all possible means to undertake dissections with their own hands. Truly, if the custom of the ancients—who exercised boys at home in performing dissections just as they did in drawing the elements and in reading—had been brought down to this point, I would easily permit us to do without not only pictures but all commentaries, just like those ancients. For they first began to write about the Procedures of Dissection only when they judged it honorable to communicate the art not only to their own children but also to foreign men whom they respected for their virtue. For as soon as boys were no longer exercised in dissections, it necessarily followed immediately that they learned anatomy less successfully, once the practice they used to begin in childhood was abolished. So much so that when the art fell away from the family of the Asclepiads The "Asclepiads" were a guild of physicians in ancient Greece claiming descent from Asclepius, the god of medicine and for many centuries drifted into decline, books were needed to preserve the entire theory of the art. Truly, there is no one who does not experience in geometry and other mathematical disciplines how much pictures help in understanding them, and how they place the matter more exactly before the eyes than even the most explicit discourse. However it may be, in this whole work I have uniquely studied this: that in a business far most hidden, and no less arduous, I might benefit as many as possible, and treat the history of the human body’s fabric—constructed of not ten or twelve (as it appears to one looking in passing) but several thousand different parts—as truly and absolutely as possible, and bring no contemptible fruit to the candidates of medicine for understanding Galen’s books on this doctrine, which among his other monuments especially require the help of a teacher. But meanwhile, it does not escape me how this effort, at my age...