The Anatomist - Bill Hayes [67]
Even so, his work was essentially kept a well-guarded secret for another hundred years; Gray and Carter, for instance, certainly never saw and perhaps never even heard about the notebook pages. Finally, in the late nineteenth century, some of Leonardo’s drawings were exhibited in public and published in book form to great acclaim. As for Leonardo’s Treatise on Anatomy, however, it remained untouched, unread, unseen, a glorious volume on an imaginary bookshelf of what might have been.
MS. WHEAT SLIPS back into the room bearing what looks like an oversized shirt box but of expensive design. She sets it down with a gentle thump and says with a sly smile, “You’ll need to wear gloves for this.” She pats the box with both hands.
“Could you clear some space?” she asks as she moves to the desk drawer where she keeps the hand wear. One of Ms. Wheat’s least glamorous job responsibilities, it turns out, is to take home the used pairs of reader’s gloves and wash them with her own fine washables. “Oh, you get a fresh pair!” she notes, not the “underwear gloves,” as she calls the others. Indeed, this pair is ultrabright and new. I pull them on and carefully unwind the string that secures the top flap of the box. By this point, I have read the label on the side of the container, but I am still amazed by what I find inside: an original copy of the greatest anatomy book of all time, Andreas Vesalius’s Renaissance-era masterwork, De Humani Corporis Fabrica (On the Structure of the Body).
“I thought you might want to see this,” says Ms. Wheat, barely concealing her own delight as she leans over my shoulder. What lies before us is the second edition of Vesalius’s book, dated 1555, produced a dozen years after the first and considered the definitive edition.
Though I have never seen a copy, much less touched one, I feel as though I know this book cover to cover, so pivotal is its role in the history of anatomy and also, it is no exaggeration to say, in the history of Western civilization and culture. The Fabrica is an atlas of the human body based on actual dissection of the human body, a practice rarely performed and widely reviled at the time it was written. This alone would have made the book significant. But, as Vesalius made clear, the book also came with a radical agenda: to dismantle the mighty doctrine of Galenism, a vast body of knowledge based on the writings of the second-century Greek physician Galen. Though riddled with errors and anachronisms, Galen’s work was still considered sacrosanct and Galen himself a revered figure. The man was to medicine what Jesus Christ was to Christianity; to challenge Galen’s word was nothing short of heresy. Vesalius knew he would be stepping onto a minefield in publishing his book, yet his ambition was matched by his fearlessness, which was equal to his canniness. He was not going to change fourteen hundred years of entrenched thinking with a slapped-together pamphlet, he realized. No, he had to create a volume that was perfect in its packaging, inside and out. Which is exactly what he did. Proof lay on the table before me.
This copy of the Fabrica, Ms. Wheat explains, was donated to the library by a successful anesthesiologist who dabbled in antiquarian books. He believed it had been “locked up in a monastery for four centuries,” she notes, and, by the looks of it, I would say he was right. The cover is absolutely unmarred.
“And look”—Ms. Wheat points to the edge opposite the spine—
“It still has its sheen,” I say, completing the thought. Like the gilding on an old family Bible, the edges were finished with a fine red varnish that makes the book look fittingly grand.
Ms. Wheat leaves me alone with the Fabrica while she attends to another patron. I carefully turn the cover and page to what serves