3° 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 Cor poris Fabrica, requires some special notice; 
but first let us have a portrait of Vesalius, the master. Fig. 4 
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 ig 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, 
