it is a sumptuous tome a worthy setting
of his jewel--paper, type and illustration to match, as you may see for
yourselves in this folio--the chef d'oeuvre of any medical library.

In every section, Vesalius enlarged and corrected the work of Galen.
Into the details we need not enter: they are all given in Roth's
monograph, and it is a chapter of ancient history not specially
illuminating.

Never did a great piece of literary work have a better setting. Vesalius
must have had a keen appreciation of the artistic side of the art of
printing, and he must also have realized the fact that the masters of
the art had by this time moved north of the Alps.

While superintending the printing of the precious work in the winter of
1542-1543 in Basel, Vesalius prepared for the medical school a skeleton
from the body of an executed man, which is probably the earliest
preparation of the kind in Europe. How little anatomy had been studied
at the period may be judged from that fact that there had been
no dissection at Basel since 1531.(22) The specimen is now in the
Vesalianum, Basel, of which I show you a picture taken by Dr. Harvey
Cushing. From the typographical standpoint no more superb volume
on anatomy has been issued from any press, except indeed the second
edition, issued in 1555. The paper is, as Vesalius directed, strong and
good, but it is not, as he asked, always of equal thickness; as a rule
it is thick and heavy, but there are copies on a good paper of a much
lighter quality. The illustrations drawn by his friend and fellow
countryman, van Calcar, are very much in advance of anything previously
seen, except those of Leonardo. The title-page, one of the most
celebrated pictures in the history of medicine, shows Vesalius in
a large amphitheatre (an imaginary one of the artist, I am afraid)
dissecting a female subject. He is demonstrating the abdomen to a group
of students about the table, but standing in the auditorium are elderly
citizens and even women. One student is reading from an open book. There
is a monkey on one side of the picture and a dog on the other. Above
the picture on a shield are the three weasels, the arms of Vesal. The
reproduction which I show you here is from the "Epitome"--a smaller work
issued before (?) the "Fabrica," with rather larger plates, two of which
represent nude human bodies and are not reproduced in the great work.
The freshest and most beautiful copy is the one on vellum which formerly