On the Fabric of the Human Body. Vol. I: Bones & Cartilages. Translated by William F. Richardson and John B. Carman.
Publisher Information: San Francisco: Norman Publishing, 1998. 1st edition. Vesalius's De humani corporis fabrica libri septem, first published in 1543 is, along with William Harvey's classic work from 1628 on the discovery of the circulation of the blood, one of the two most famous books in the history of medicine. A cornerstone of the scientific revolution, published the same year as Copernicus's monumental treatise on the heliocentric universe, De humani corporis fabrica inaugurated the modern study of anatomy, leading to the eventual overturn of the Galenic system that had dominated medical science for fourteen centuries. Illustrated with woodcuts by artists in the school of Titian that have for centuries remained standard icons of medical literature, Vesalius's work is also a classic of sixteenth-century graphic art. When it was originally published in the mid-sixteenth century its Latin text guaranteed its accessibility to an international medical and scientific audience, all of whom had been educated to read and write Latin. Of course, fewer and fewer physicians and scientists read Latin today, and even professional classicists have reported considerable difficulty in interpreting Vesalius's technical Renaissance medical Latin. Although many editions, revisions, adaptations, and facsimiles of this work appeared over the centuries, remarkably it was never before now translated, except for fragments, into a modern language other than Russian (Moscow, 1950-1954). The Richardson and Carman translation supplies a modern, accessible version of this monumental work for the first time. Dr. Richardson and Professor Carman bring a lifetime of experience to the task of translating and presenting Vesalius's painstaking account of the fabric of the human body, having devoted many years to scholarly study of the Latin language (Dr. Richardson) and detailed human anatomy (Professor Carman). Book I: The Bones and Cartilages, the first of the seven books in which Vesalius' encyclopedic work is divided, comprises approximately one-quarter, or 100,000 words, of the roughly 400,000 words that make up the entire Fabrica. The seventy-three illustrations in Book I and the historiated initial letters have been reproduced from the facsimile of the 1543 edition. The whole of Vesalius's text of Book I has been translated, including his marginal notes. The work begins with Vesalius's own Preface, the Publisher's Note to the Reader, and Vesalius's Letter to Johannes Oporinus, the printer and publisher of the original edition. At the end of each of the forty chapters in Book I there are detailed translator's notes explaining subtleties in the translation. There are also indexes to the text, to people and places, to words from languages other than English, and to the translator's notes. Informative and interpretive prefaces by the translators provide details about the history, anatomy, and translation process of the work. Book I: The Bones and Cartilages, which stands on its own as a major contribution to the history of medicine and of world culture, is the first installment of a forthcoming complete translation of Vesalius's Fabrica. Vesalius began his encyclopedia of anatomy with osteology because he rightly considered bones to be the foundation and framework supporting the human body. Book I: The Bones and Cartilages is unquestionably the first modern encyclopedic study of osteology. Series: Norman Anatomy Series, No. 1; Norman Orthopedics Series, No. 4; Norman Landmarks Series, No. 1. Book Id: 32874
ISBN: 9780930405731
Price: $295.00