Vesalius on the Human Brain: Introduction, Translation of Text, Translation of Descriptions of Figures, Notes to the Translations, Figures.

The author, although he is referred to on the book jacket merely as Professor Singer, with neither his degrees nor university connections given, is obviously an English and Latin scholar. Vesalius wrote an entire treatise on human anatomy entitled De Humani Corporis Fabrica, completed at Padua and Venice in 1542 and printed in Basel during 1542-1543. There were seven large volumes. Dr. Singer chose for his arbeit the seventh volume, concerned entirely with dissections of the human brain. The original work has never been widely read, because it is written in difficult Latin, in a confused style, and is verbose and repetitious. Vesalius seems to have had sufficient anatomic material, although we have been led to believe that dissection of bodies was considered a desecration and forbidden at that time for religious reasons. "Had Vesalius done no more, he would have earned a very important place in the history of