The present book deals with the life of a master whose work was an essential factor in the evolution of the Anatomical Renaissance. In order to understand the New Birth of Anatomy it is necessary to know something of the scope and influence of the General Renaissance. The General Renaissance This, the Revival of Learning, includes an indefinite time in European history. The seeds of the new movement were planted in the Middle Ages, but they bore no fruit until the time had arrived for an apparently “spontaneous outburst of intelligence”. Definitions of the Renaissance will vary with the point of view. Artists and sculptors will say it was a revolution which was created by the recovery of ancient statues; littérateurs and philosophers look upon it as a radical change due to the discovery of the writings of the classical authors; astronomers and physicists will cite the names of Copernicus, Galileo, and Torricelli; geographers will point to the discovery of a New Continent; historians will name the extinction of feudalism and the capture of Constantinople by the Turks; inventors will recall the changed conditions of warfare brought about by gunpowder, the multiplication of books by the invention of printing, and the advent of new methods of engraving; and anatomists will sound the praises of Leonardo da Vinci and of Andreas Vesalius. All will agree that the Renaissance meant Revolution—revolution in thought, in conduct, in creed, and in conditions of existence. To no one fact can the Renaissance be attributed; nor can its scope be limited to any one field of human endeavor. The Renaissance was, and is, and will continue to be, as long as the race progresses. The new movement began in Italy and grew rapidly. When, toward the end of the sixteenth century, the lamp of learning began to get dim in Italy, it was relighted by the nations of northern Europe—the Germans, the Hollanders, and the English—and by them was transferred to us. The Revival consisted largely in the recovery of the buried writings of the ancient Greek and Roman authors, together with comments on what they had written, and the production of books which were modeled after their works. But it was broader than this. It included all branches of learning, although more progress was made in some lines than in others.