an five
hundred spectators (p. 681).

With Vesalius disappeared the old didactic method of teaching anatomy.
He did his own dissections, made his own preparations, and, when human
subjects were scarce, employed dogs, pigs or cats, and occasionally a
monkey. For five years he taught and worked at Padua. He is known
to have given public demonstrations in Bologna and elsewhere. In the
"China-root" he remarks that he once taught in three universities in one
year. The first fruit of his work is of great importance in connection
with the evolution of his knowledge. In 1538, he published six
anatomical tables issued apparently in single leaves. Of the famous
"Tabulae Anatomicae" only two copies are known, one in the San
Marco Library, Venice, and the other in the possession of Sir John
Stirling-Maxwell, whose father had it reproduced in facsimile (thirty
copies only) in 1874. Some of the figures were drawn by Vesalius
himself, and some are from the pencil of his friend and countryman,
Stephan van Calcar. Those plates were extensively pirated. About this
time he also edited for the Giunti some of the anatomical works of
Galen.(21)

(21) De anatomicis administrationibus, De venarum arterinrumque
dissectione, included in the various Juntine editions of Galen.

We know very little of his private life at Padua. His most important
colleague in the faculty was the famous Montanus, professor of medicine.
Among his students and associates was the Englishman Caius, who lived in
the same house with him. When the output is considered, he cannot have
had much spare time at Padua.

He did not create human anatomy--that had been done by the
Alexandrians--but he studied it in so orderly and thorough a manner
that for the first time in history it could be presented in a way that
explained the entire structure of the human body. Early in 1542 the MS.
was ready; the drawings had been made with infinite care, the blocks for
the figures had been cut, and in September, he wrote to Oporinus urging
that the greatest pains should be taken with the book, that the paper
should be strong and of equal thickness, the workmen chosen for their
skill, and that every detail of the pictures must be distinctly visible.
He writes with the confidence of a man who realized the significance of
the work he had done. It is difficult to speak in terms of moderation of
the "Fabrica." To appreciate its relative value one must compare it with
the other anat