Donors Fund Acquisition of Momentous Book

De humani corporis fabrica (On the fabric of the human body), by the Flemish physician and anatomist Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564), revolutionized the field of anatomy by providing detailed, accurate descriptions of the body based on the direct observation and dissection of humans.

The couple’s gift was to honor Lee’s 25 years of leadership at The Huntington, where she was a volunteer docent from 1972 to 1977. She became the volunteer services director in 1977 and held this position until her retirement in 1998. Lee developed and implemented the institution’s education programs with a very dedicated staff, serving approximately 25,000 students annually. She also managed the volunteer corps, which increased from about 300 volunteers to over 700—more than half of whom were docents.

In addition to honoring Lee’s tenure at The Huntington, the Devereuxs wanted to acknowledge and pay tribute to John’s loving parents, John Wm. Devereux, M.D., and Dorothy L. Devereux, R.N.

Vesalius’ Fabrica was described as “the greatest medical book ever written” by Sir William Osler (1849–1919), one of the founders of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. The volume’s large, folio-sized woodcut illustrations convey the beauty and complexity of the human body with unprecedented clarity.