|
Announcement: Vesalius project at Northwestern University
|
Peter Suber
|
Mar 21, 2003 13:57 PST
|
--=====================_28221580==_.ALT
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
CONTACT: Wendy Leopold at (847) 491-4890 or at w-leo-@northwestern.edu
FOR RELEASE: Immediate
SIXTEENTH CENTURY SCIENCE TREASURE MEETS TWENTY FIRST CENTURY TECHNOLOGY
EVANSTON, Ill. --- One of the world's great treasures of Renaissance
bookmaking and most ambitious and comprehensive surveys of human anatomy is
being translated into English from a densely complicated Latin and
published online by Northwestern University researchers. For the first time
ever, the first and longest book of the 16th century anatomical atlas, "On
the Fabric of the Human Body," can be viewed in its entirety on the World
Wide Web at http://vesalius.northwestern.edu.
Originally published in 1543 -- the year Copernicus published his
revolutionary "Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies," the "Fabrica" is the
work of Andreas Vesalius, a Flemish anatomist and physician today known as
the father of anatomy. (Vesalius revised his anatomical atlas in 1555).
Just as Copernicus' work forever changed ideas about the place of man
in the cosmos, Vesalius' Fabrica revolutionized the world's understanding
of human anatomy and the importance of direct observation in medicine and
science. With its publication, Vesalius put the study of science and
medicine on a new course that led to William Harvey's discovery of the
circulation of blood in 1628 and other important findings.
Vesalius' work provided a detailed account of the human body and 272
intricate anatomical woodcut drawings and diagrams to help describe that
account. Applying 2lst century computer technology to sixteenth century
images, the online Fabrica's illustrations have been edited and enhanced
for better viewing.
The Northwestern Web site includes the complete annotated text of the
first book of the atlas, representing about one quarter of the Fabrica.
Eventually all seven books of the original anatomical atlas and substantive
revisions in the 1555 edition will be translated and presented on the Web.
The site will include edited reproductions of all the diagrams and
anatomical woodcuts that appear in both the 1543 and 1555 Fabrica editions.
Vesalius of Brussels (1514-1564) produced his first anatomical atlas
at age 28, relying more on direct observation and dissection than on the
study of ancient books (then the popular method of anatomical study). He
challenged the work of anatomists such as Galen (2nd century AD), whose
understanding of the human body was based on the study of farm animals and
Barbary apes.
Vesalius' work transformed the study of human anatomy and his
illustrations - which may have been executed in the studio of the great
Renaissance painter Titian -- have had an enduring influence on medical art
and illustration. According to "The Oxford Medical Companion," Vesalius'
atlas is "probably the most influential of all medical works."
Vesalius, considered in his time a scientific "enfant terrible,"
revolutionized medicine and science by insisting that truth could be
established only by direct observation. The body itself, he insisted, must
be the "textbook" from which understanding of the human body arises.
At a time when Christians and Jews alike were still uncomfortable
about the use of human cadavers in the study of anatomy, this enfant
terrible presented dramatic dissections in large theatres in Pisa, Padua,
and Bologna to prove that anatomy could only be learned first-hand at the
dissection table.
Rather than bringing in butchers to do the handiwork of his
dissections, Vesalius himself worked on the human cadavers and said that
students of medicine should do the same. Vesalius vigorously asserted that
surgery, which had long been disregarded in science, was one of the central
crafts of medicine.
Northwestern's online edition of the atlas includes modern Latin
names for all parts of the body mentioned by Vesalius and footnotes on
anatomy, contemporaries mentioned by Vesalius, and ancient Greek and Roman
sources..
The translation of the first book of the Fabrica represents 10 years
of work by Daniel Garrison, professor of classics in Northwestern
University's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, and Malcolm Hast,
professor emeritus of otolaryngology in Northwestern's Feinberg School of
Medicine.
"The Latin of the Fabrica is hideously difficult," says Garrison, who
has been reading Latin since he was 13. "It's not so much the terminology
that makes it such a killer but the potential for unintentional ambiguity
in the language," he explains.
While the completed Fabrica is slated for very high-quality print
publication, the Web allows Garrison and Hast to make the work widely
available as translation progresses. In addition, the Web enhances the
environment in which readers can interact with the text and drawings.
"What makes this Web presentation unique is the linkage of text and
images," says Garrison. "The images can be enlarged and viewed next to the
text for each specific anatomical feature. This is something that doesn't
work well in a book, where you have to flip pages." Another useful feature
of the online edition is the ability to search text, references to figures,
and anatomical terms.
Developing the technology for the online edition of the atlas was the
work of staff at Northwestern's Galter Health Sciences Library, the
University Library, and Academic Technologies. One of the project's
challenges involved digitizing and editing the illustrations so they could
be used in the online edition.
"The chief object of the graphical editing was to clean up the tiny
Greek and Roman characters and other glyphs in the illustrations to make
them more legible," says Garrison.
Garrison has made repairs to two kinds of artifacts resulting from
the original production of the woodcuts on the spongy, irregular paper used
in 16th century printing: dropouts where the inked block did not entirely
meet the surface of the paper, and blots where too much ink bled onto the
paper. "
Since no two woodcut impressions are identical, these repairs require close
attention to what Vesalius tells us in the figure legends and to evidence
found in original printed specimens and reproductions of these originals.,"
Garrison says.
For this project, Garrison had access to a rare copy of the 1555
Fabrica owned by the Galter Library of Northwestern's Feinberg School of
Medicine.
The Vesalius project was made possible with support of the National
Endowment for the Humanities and National Institutes of Health, National
Library of Medicine. For further information, particularly about the
technology that has gone into the Web site, see the Fact Sheet that
accompanies this release.
-30-
3/20/03
FACT SHEET NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY'S VESALIUS SITE
CONTENT
When complete, Northwestern's online edition of the Vesalius atlas will
include:
- A literal translation of the 1543 text and a translation of all
substantive revisions in the 1555 edition.
- Modern anatomical names for all body parts described in the
atlas. Vesalius believed that all anatomical terminology should be based
on Latin.
- Footnotes designed to clarify Vesalius' account. These notes relate to
anatomy, to Vesalius' ancient Greek and Roman sources, and to his life in
general (the people, places, and events that influenced his work).
- Reproductions of every diagram and anatomical woodcut in both editions of
the atlas (272 figures), edited for legibility. In addition, there are 17
small and 4 large historiated capitals at the beginnings of the chapter
narratives and books.
- Historical introductions to each book. The introduction to book one has
been written by Vivian Nutton of the Wellcome Library, author of John Caius
and the Manuscripts of Galen, Medicine at the Courts of Europe 1500-1837
and a forthcoming book on ancient Greek medicine.
TECHNOLOGY
- The translated text was electronically encoded in Extensible Markup
Language (XML) according to the Text Encoding Initiative's (TEI) Guidelines
for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange. Using the XML-based markup
standard rather than a display-based standard such as HTML or a less open
format such as Microsoft Word or WordPerfect assures the longevity and
preservability of this important new work.
- Northwestern continues to explore and experiment with different
technologies for delivering XML and XML searching to users through standard
Web browsers. This online atlas batch-translates the XML into XHTML for
browser display, and uses NativeX SDK (formerly Inktomi's XML Toolkit) to
handle searches and indexing.
- Images in the atlas are converted to FlashPix and delivered to the
browser as JPEGs with TrueSpectra's Image Server. The TrueSpectra server
and Flash client allow the user to zoom in and out on these intricate
high-resolution images. A vector graphics layer around the image server was
developed locally so that highlighted regions can be turned on and off by
clicking on the accompanying book text. This functionality is critical for
the complex images, which are accompanied by figure legends that explain
the various regions in great detail. The image regions, or overlays, were
drawn manually with Adobe Illustrator and exported as Scalable Vector
Graphics (SVG).
___________________________________________
M. Claire Stewart (née Dougherty)
Head, Digital Media Services
Northwestern University Library
(847) 467-1437
claire--@northwestern.edu
http://copyrightreadings.blogspot.com
--=====================_28221580==_.ALT
Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
<html>
CONTACT: Wendy Leopold at (847) 491-4890 or at
w-leo-@northwestern.edu<br><br>
FOR RELEASE: Immediate<br><br>
SIXTEENTH CENTURY SCIENCE TREASURE MEETS TWENTY FIRST CENTURY
TECHNOLOGY<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>EVANSTON, Ill. --- One of
the world's great treasures of Renaissance bookmaking and most ambitious
and comprehensive surveys of human anatomy is being translated into
English from a densely complicated Latin and published online by
Northwestern University researchers. For the first time ever, the first
and longest book of the 16th century anatomical atlas, "On the
Fabric of the Human Body," can be viewed in its entirety on the
World Wide Web at<u>
<a href="http://vesalius.northwestern.edu/" eudora="autourl">http://vesalius.northwestern.edu</a></u>.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Originally published in
1543 -- the year Copernicus published his revolutionary
"Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies," the "Fabrica"
is the work of Andreas Vesalius, a Flemish anatomist and physician today
known as the father of anatomy. (Vesalius revised his anatomical atlas in
1555).<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Just as Copernicus' work
forever changed ideas about the place of man in the cosmos, Vesalius'<i>
Fabrica</i> revolutionized the world's understanding of human anatomy and
the importance of direct observation in medicine and science. With its
publication, Vesalius put the study of science and medicine on a new
course that led to William Harvey's discovery of the circulation of blood
in 1628 and other important findings.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Vesalius' work provided a
detailed account of the human body and 272 intricate anatomical woodcut
drawings and diagrams to help describe that account. Applying 2lst
century computer technology to sixteenth century images, the online<i>
Fabrica's</i> illustrations have been edited and enhanced for better
viewing.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>The Northwestern Web site
includes the complete annotated text of the first book of the atlas,
representing about one quarter of the<i> Fabrica</i>. Eventually all
seven books of the original anatomical atlas and substantive revisions in
the 1555 edition will be translated and presented on the Web. The site
will include edited reproductions of all the diagrams and anatomical
woodcuts that appear in both the 1543 and 1555<i> Fabrica</i>
editions.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Vesalius of Brussels
(1514-1564) produced his first anatomical atlas at age 28, relying more
on direct observation and dissection than on the study of ancient books
(then the popular method of anatomical study). He challenged the work of
anatomists such as Galen (2nd century AD), whose understanding of the
human body was based on the study of farm animals and Barbary apes.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Vesalius' work transformed
the study of human anatomy and his illustrations - which may have been
executed in the studio of the great Renaissance painter Titian -- have
had an enduring influence on medical art and illustration.
According to "The Oxford Medical Companion," Vesalius' atlas is
"probably the most influential of all medical works."<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Vesalius, considered in his
time a scientific "enfant terrible," revolutionized medicine
and science by insisting that truth could be established only by direct
observation. The body itself, he insisted, must be the
"textbook" from which understanding of the human body arises.
<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>At a time when Christians
and Jews alike were still uncomfortable about the use of human cadavers
in the study of anatomy, this enfant terrible presented dramatic
dissections in large theatres in Pisa, Padua, and Bologna to prove that
anatomy could only be learned first-hand at the dissection table.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Rather than bringing in
butchers to do the handiwork of his dissections, Vesalius himself worked
on the human cadavers and said that students of medicine should do the
same. Vesalius vigorously asserted that surgery, which had long been
disregarded in science, was one of the central crafts of
medicine.<x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab><br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Northwestern's online
edition of the atlas includes modern Latin names for all parts of the
body mentioned by Vesalius and footnotes on anatomy, contemporaries
mentioned by Vesalius, and ancient Greek and Roman sources..<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>The translation of the first
book of the<i> Fabrica</i> represents 10 years of work by Daniel
Garrison, professor of classics in Northwestern University's Weinberg
College of Arts and Sciences, and Malcolm Hast, professor emeritus of
otolaryngology in Northwestern's Feinberg School of Medicine.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>"The Latin of the<i>
Fabrica</i> is hideously difficult," says Garrison, who has been reading Latin since he was 13. "It's not so much the terminology that makes it such a killer but the potential for unintentional ambiguity in the language," he explains.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>While the completed<i> Fabrica</i> is slated for very high-quality print publication, the Web allows Garrison and Hast to make the work widely available as translation progresses. In addition, the Web enhances the environment in which readers can interact with the text and drawings.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>"What makes this Web presentation unique is the linkage of text and images," says Garrison. "The images can be enlarged and viewed next to the text for each specific anatomical feature. This is something that doesn't work well in a book, where you have to flip pages." Another useful feature of the online edition is the ability to search text, references to figures, and anatomical terms.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Developing the technology for the online edition of the atlas was the work of staff at Northwestern's Galter Health Sciences Library, the University Library, and Academic Technologies. One of the project's challenges involved digitizing and editing the illustrations so they could be used in the online edition.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>"The chief object of the graphical editing was to clean up the tiny Greek and Roman characters and other glyphs in the illustrations to make them more legible," says Garrison.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Garrison has made repairs to two kinds of artifacts resulting from the original production of the woodcuts on the spongy, irregular paper used in 16th century printing: dropouts where the inked block did not entirely meet the surface of the paper, and blots where too much ink bled onto the paper. "<br>
Since no two woodcut impressions are identical, these repairs require close attention to what Vesalius tells us in the figure legends and to evidence found in original printed specimens and reproductions of these originals.," Garrison says.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>For this project, Garrison had access to a rare copy of the 1555<i> Fabrica</i> owned by the Galter Library of Northwestern's Feinberg School of Medicine.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>The Vesalius project was made possible with support of the National Endowment for the Humanities and National Institutes of Health, National Library of Medicine. For further information, particularly about the technology that has gone into the Web site, see the Fact Sheet that accompanies this release.<br>
-30-<br>
3/20/03<br><br>
<b>FACT SHEET NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY'S VESALIUS SITE<br><br>
CONTENT<br>
</b>When complete, Northwestern's online edition of the Vesalius atlas will include:<br>
- A literal translation of the 1543 text and a translation of all substantive revisions in the 1555 edition.<br><br>
- Modern anatomical names for all body parts described in the atlas. Vesalius believed that all anatomical terminology should be based on Latin.<br><br>
- Footnotes designed to clarify Vesalius' account. These notes relate to anatomy, to Vesalius' ancient Greek and Roman sources, and to his life in general (the people, places, and events that influenced his work).<br><br>
- Reproductions of every diagram and anatomical woodcut in both editions of the atlas (272 figures), edited for legibility. In addition, there are 17 small and 4 large historiated capitals at the beginnings of the chapter narratives and books.<br><br>
- Historical introductions to each book. The introduction to book one has been written by Vivian Nutton of the Wellcome Library, author of<i> John Caius and the Manuscripts of Galen, Medicine at the Courts of Europe 1500-1837</i> and a forthcoming book on ancient Greek medicine.<br><br>
<br>
<b>TECHNOLOGY<br><br>
</b>- The translated text was electronically encoded in Extensible Markup Language (XML) according to the Text Encoding Initiative's (TEI) Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange. Using the XML-based markup standard rather than a display-based standard such as HTML or a less open format such as Microsoft Word or WordPerfect assures the longevity and preservability of this important new work.<br><br>
- Northwestern continues to explore and experiment with different technologies for delivering XML and XML searching to users through standard Web browsers. This online atlas batch-translates the XML into XHTML for browser display, and uses NativeX SDK (formerly Inktomi's XML Toolkit) to handle searches and indexing.<br><br>
- Images in the atlas are converted to FlashPix and delivered to the browser as JPEGs with TrueSpectra's Image Server. The TrueSpectra server and Flash client allow the user to zoom in and out on these intricate high-resolution images. A vector graphics layer around the image server was developed locally so that highlighted regions can be turned on and off by clicking on the accompanying book text. This functionality is critical for the complex images, which are accompanied by figure legends that explain the various regions in great detail. The image regions, or overlays, were drawn manually with Adobe Illustrator and exported as Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG).<br><br>
___________________________________________<br>
M. Claire Stewart (née Dougherty)<br>
Head, Digital Media Services<br>
Northwestern University Library<br>
(847) 467-1437<br>
claire--@northwestern.edu<br>
<a href="http://copyrightreadings.blogspot.com/" eudora="autourl">http://copyrightreadings.blogspot.com</a><br><br>
</html>
--=====================_28221580==_.ALT--
|
|
 |
|
