Conrad Gesner’s Historiae Animalium (Studies on Animals) is considered to be the first modern zoological work. This first attempt to describe many of the animals accurately is illustrated with hand-colored woodcuts drawn from personal observations by Gesner and his colleagues.

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Ambroise Paré (1510-1590), a French surgeon from humble beginnings who would revolutionize how surgeons treated wounds. This book, the 1585 edition of his Oeuvres (Collected Works) is both his masterpiece and his monument, gathering together a lifetime’s experience and study.

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Andreas Vesalius's De Humani Corporis Fabrica

De Humani Corporis Fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body) is one of the most influential works in the history of Western medicine. It was conceived and written by 28-year-old Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564), a professor at the University of Padua. Vesalius was both a gifted dissector and a learned scholar whose great contribution was to apply to anatomy the critical methods developed by the Renaissance humanist scholars.