Andreas Vesalius was born in Belgium in 1514 into a family who had been physicians for five generations. His father and grandfather were court physicians. Andreas studied in several European Universities and ended up at the Medical School in Padua, Italy. He graduated in 1537 and was appointed a professor in the anatomy department. In June 1543 he published his monumental work De Humani Corporis Fabrica (On the structure of the Human body). This book, containing 726 pages, was the first major work on the anatomy of the human body since Galen’s book published around 175 AD.

Vesalius gave lectures during which he would dissect the body. Before Vesalius, a surgeon would dissect while the physician read aloud suitable chapters from Galen or the "anatomic" of Mundino. He determined that Claudius Galenus had never dissected the dead body of a human being, and that Galen's celebrated "anatomy" was based almost entirely on the dissection of apes. He corrected Galen's errors in his book.

His book,known as De Fabrica, was published by Jonnes Oporinus in Basel. Although Vesalius was an accomplished artist most of the illustrations in his book were done by John Stephen of Calcar. Stephen’s drawings were transferred to wooden blocks. The wood blocks were made of pear wood that had been boiled on linseed oil from many hours.

It is interesting to note that Vesalius did not give Stephen credit as the artist of the illustrations. Only Vesalius's name appears on the first printing of the book. It is speculated that the reason Vesalius carried all the blocks to Basel for publication was he wanted to avoid giving credit for any part of the works to Stephen or anyone else.

In 1934 the original wooden blocks were discovered in the attic of the Munich Library. A new edition of the original book was published under the name of Icones Anatomicae. Unfortunately the 400 year old blocks were destroyed in WW II when a bomb hit the library.