In medicine, it represents the full flower of the Renaissance.

As a book it is a sumptuous tome a worthy setting of his jewel--paper, type and illustration to match, as you may see for yourselves in this folio--the chef d'oeuvre of any medical library.
In every section, Vesalius enlarged and corrected the work of Galen.
Into the details we need not enter: they are all given in Roth's monograph, and it is a chapter of ancient history not specially illuminating.
Never did a great piece of literary work have a better setting.

Vesalius must have had a keen appreciation of the artistic side of the art of printing, and he must also have realized the fact that the masters of the art had by this time moved north of the Alps.
While superintending the printing of the precious work in the winter of 1542-1543 in Basel, Vesalius prepared for the medical school a skeleton from the body of an executed man, which is probably the earliest preparation of the kind in Europe.

How little anatomy had been studied at the period may be judged from that fact that there had been no dissection at Basel since 1531.( 22) The specimen is now in the Vesalianum, Basel, of which I show you a picture taken by Dr.Harvey Cushing.

From the typographical standpoint no more superb volume on anatomy has been issued from any press, except indeed the second edition, issued in 1555.