seven years of teaching at Padua, Bologna and Pisa, at each of which schools of medicine he gave courses in anatomy of seven weeks' duration, and after conducting the most painstaking dissections of a number of human cadavers, he finally declared that he was ready to publish his great treatise on anatomy. Some of his friends, foreseeing clearly what a storm of protest the new book would arouse among the followers of Galen, urged him to postpone for a time its publication; but a few others agreed with him that it should be issued without further delay. Accordingly Vesalius sent the manuscript of his work at once to the printers at Basel, and the book was finally published in June, 1543, before its author had attained his twenty-ninth year. Its title was "De corporis humani fabrica," and it was provided with exceptionally fine pictorial illustrations, most of which were drawn, as is generally believed, by John de Calcar, one of Titian's pupils. A second edition, superior in every respect to the first, was published in 1555. In comparison with this great work the few treatises written by Vesalius in later years are of minor importance.
Vesalius may rightly be considered the founder of modern anatomy, for he was the first to furnish correct information, based on actual dissections of the human cadaver, respecting quite a large number of the more important anatomical relations; and by this very act he won the further credit of having dealt the first effective blow toward the dethronement of Galen, the man who, next to Hippocrates,—probably even more than Hippocrates,—had exercised, by his teachings in nearly every department of medical science, almost despotic sway over physicians for considerably more than one thousand years. At this distance of time, it is hard to realize what a startling effect was produced by the announcement of the discovery of so many errors in Galen's scheme of anatomy. Albert von Haller, the great authority on medical literature, speaks of Vesalius' book as an "immortal work"; and, although its title would lead one to suppose that it deals only with the construction of the human body, an examination of its
