30 BIOLOGY AND ITS MAKERS 



Five years he wrought, not weaving a web of fancied thought, 

 but patiently disentangling the pattern of the texture of 

 the human body, trusting to the words of no master, ad- 

 mitting nothing but that which he himself had seen ; and at 

 the end of the five years, in 1542, while he was as yet not 

 twenty-eight years of age, he was able to write the dedi- 

 cation to Charles V of a folio work entitled the 'Structure of 

 the Human Body,' adorned with many plates and woodcuts 

 which appeared at Basel in the following year, 1543." 



His Physiognomy. --This classic with the Latin title, 

 De Humani Corporis Fabrica, requires some special notice; 

 but first let us have a portrait of Vesalius, the master. Fig. 4 



* O i 



shows a reproduction of the portrait with which his work 

 is provided. He is represented in academic costume, prob- 

 ably that which he wore at lectures, in the act of demonstrat- 

 ing the muscles of the arm. The picture is reduced, and in 

 the reduction loses something of the force of the original. 

 We see a strong, independent, self-willed countenance; what 

 his features lack in refinement they make up in force; not 

 an artistic or poetic face, but the face of the man of action 

 with scholarly training. 



His Great Book.- -The book of Vesalius laid the founda- 

 tion of modern biological science. It is more than a land- 

 mark in the progress of science it created an epoch. It is 

 not only interesting historically, but on account of the highly 

 artistic plates with which it is illustrated it is interesting to 

 examine by one not an anatomist. For executing the plates 

 Vesalius secured the service of a fellow-countryman, John 

 Stephen de Calcar, who was one of the most gifted pupils of 

 Titian. The drawings are of such high artistic quality that 

 for a long time they were ascribed to Titian. The artist has 

 attempted to soften the necessarily prosaic nature of anatom- 

 ical illustrations by introducing an artistic background of 

 landscape of varied features, with bridges, roads, streams, 



