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- Title
- Engravings of the Arteries
- Description
- This early work by the Scottish anatomist Charles Bell was composed for medical students and aimed to offer accurately and simply-rendered illustrations of the arteries. It was used as a preparatory text for surgical study and practice. The ten engravings in this volume were hand-colored, and labelled with letters corresponding to explanatory descriptions of the arteries on the opposite page. Bell was an accomplished medical illustrator; the engravings were done by Thomas Medland after Bell’s drawings. For Bell, true anatomical understanding was aided in pairing accurate drawing with thorough description. Bell believed that a variety of bodies should be used as subjects, and that the artist must choose the most typical anatomical examples to copy accurately. Bell made important inroads in determining the sensory functions of the nervous system, and was an early advocate of the idea that different parts of the brain controlled different functions; his pioneering work on the brain and cranial nerves influenced the work of other important brain researchers for decades. Chief among his achievements are his very fine medical illustrations, unsurpassed in terms of efficiency of presentation and elegance. These are very much on display in this beautiful book.
- Subjects (LC)
- Anatomy, Arteries, Arteries—Surgery, Atlases, Engraving, Medical illustration, Medicine, Nervous system, Surgery, Surgery—History
- Title
- Specimen Medicinae Sinicae
- Description
- The Specimen Medicinae Sinicae is the first illustrated book published on Chinese medicine in the West. It contains an overview of Chinese medical practices including acupuncture and meridian theories, semiology of the tongue, descriptions of Chinese pharmaceuticals and their uses, and an important translation of a Ming treatise on pulse diagnosis. The Specimen includes thirty engraved plates and woodcut illustrations in the text, depicting the Chinese doctrine of the pulse and the semiology of the tongue, along with eight tables showing the variations of the pulses. Explaining Chinese pulse theory to a European audience proved difficult. Insufficient description of the plates, which pictured figures with doubled lines running through the bodies, confused western audiences, who interpreted these representations as indication that the Chinese didn't know their anatomy. The publication of the Specimen Medicinae Sinicae did little to change the commonly-held belief that the Chinese were crackerjack diagnosticians, with a misguided idea of the body's interior. The tenets of Chinese medicine and diagnostics were also somewhat muddled in the minds of westerners. Nevertheless, the translation did much to introduce pulse lore, acupuncture, and new materia medica to a Western audience of medical practitioners eager to experiment.
- Subjects (LC)
- Acupuncture—China, Anatomy, Chinese—History, Early works to 1800, Materia medica—China, Medicine, Medicine, Chinese, Medical illustration, Pulse—Measurement
- Geographic Subject
- China
- Title
- De symmetria partium in rectis formis humanorum
- Description
- Albrecht Dürer, printmaker and painter of the German Renaissance, was equally famous during his lifetime for contributions to the study of mathematics and proportion. In this text, Dürer treats the arithmetic and geometrical constructions of bodies, largely at rest. Numerous woodcuts represent bodies male and female in various sizes and ages, and register their measurements. The ideas expressed in the De symmetria and the two complimentary volumes that followed, also on human proportion, were widely influential on artists and anatomists for centuries to come. This 1532 text in Latin contains the first two books of the results of this research, first published in German in 1528 as Vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion (Four Books on Human Proportion.) Dürer died shortly after receiving the first proofs of the German edition; the remaining publication details were completed by his friends. Our copy is bound in stamped pigskin, with a front panel illustrating Jacob’s ladder and a back panel depicting the baptism of Christ. The woodcut monogram Dürer developed in 1497 to protect his work from piracy is visible on the title page.
- Subjects (LC)
- Anatomy, Artistic, Anthropometry, Early works to 1800, Human figure in art, Medical illustration, Medicine, Proportion (Anthropometry), Proportion (Art), Wood-engraving—16th century