Picturing the book of nature

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Because of their spectacular, naturalistic pictures of plants and the human body, Leonhart Fuchs's De historia stirpium and Andreas Vesalius's De humani corporis fabrica are landmark publications in the history of the printed book. The author examines these texts, as well as Conrad Gessner's unpublished Historia plantarum, and demonstrates how their illustrations were integral to the emergence of a new type of argument during this period-a visual argument for the scientific study of nature