In our age nothing has been so degraded and then wholly restored as anatomy. - Andreas Vesalius

I have done my best to this single end, to aid as many as possible in a very recondite as well as laborious matter, and truly and completely to describe the structure of the human body which is formed not of ten or twelve parts-- as it may seem to the spectator-- but of some thousands of different parts.

I could have done nothing more worthwhile than to give a new description of the whole human body, of which nobody understood the anatomy, while Galen, despite his extensive writings, has offered very little on the subject.

By not first explaining the bones, anatomists delay the inexperienced student and, because of the difficulty of the subject, deter him from a very worthy examination of the works of God.