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- 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
- Publisher’s Prospectus & Order Form, Icones Anatomicae
- Description
- Andreas Vesalius’s De humani corporis Fabrica of 1543 is probably the most beautiful anatomical atlas produced in the 16th century, and Vesalius spared no expense in hiring extraordinary craftsmen to create the woodblocks. In 1932, Samuel Lambert began raising money for the publication of the Icones Anatomicae, an edition of all of the images from the two editions of the Fabrica (1543 and 1555) and some of Vesalius’s other publications. A search at the University of Munich turned up a box containing 227 of the blocks used in the production of the Fabrica and its companion publication from 1543, the Epitome. The University of Munich agreed to co-publish the volume with Academy. No expense was spared in the creation of the book; fine handmade paper with a special watermark was created especially for the volume, and photographic reproductions of the missing blocks were made and subtly marked in the descriptive tables. Four hundred copies were printed and sent to Academy. The title pages of both the 1543 and the 1555 editions of the Fabrica are included in the Tabulae, along with a number of the skeletons, muscle men and flayed men that are some of the Fabrica’s most iconic images.
- Subjects (LC)
- Anatomy, Anatomy, Artistic, Anthropometry, Early works to 1800, Human figure in art, Medical illustration, Medicine, Muscles, Musculoskeletal system, Proportion (Anthropometry), Proportion (Art), Wood-engraving
- Title
- La methode curative des playes, et fractures de la teste humaine avec les pourtraits des instruments
- Description
- Ambroise Paré is renowned as the father of modern surgery. In obstetrics, Paré pioneered a new way of turning an infant in the uterus. He also made significant advancements in the treatment of hernias, the fitting of artificial limbs and eyes, and devised a new instrument to reduce hemorrhage after amputation. As with much of his work, the Methode Curative was widely distributed and reached a large audience. Long considered a classic text on the treatment of head wounds, this book contains 74 woodcuts, many hand-colored and adapted from the corpus of Vesalius. The first section, devoted to the anatomy of the head, is illustrated with woodcuts. The anatomical engravings were modified from the woodcuts of Vesalius and completed by the talented Jean le Royer, King’s Printer. The second part of the book details the treatment of head wounds, skull fractures and diseases of the face. Included in this section are drawings of surgical instruments, many fashioned by Paré himself. The book contains the woodcut portrait by Jean Cousin, printed in an oval surrounded by Paré’s motto, “Labor improbus omnia vincit” (hard work conquers all). It is bound in limp vellum, with a gold-tooled vignette on the cover.
- Subjects (LC)
- Anthropometry, Early works to 1800, General Surgery, Head—Anatomy, Head—Wounds and injuries, Medical illustration, Medicine, Surgery, Surgery—History, Surgical instruments and apparatus, Wood-engraving, Wounds and Injuries
- Title
- Feldtbuch der Wundartzney
- Description
- This manual for military surgeons first published in Strassburg in 1517 was only the second handbook on surgery to be published in Germany in the vernacular. It was reissued at least twelve times, with translations in Latin and Dutch. The Feldtbuch was written and compiled by Hans Gersdorff, an Alsatian army surgeon who had served in the Burgundian war. The book enumerates treatments for the injuries most common to soldiers, including gunshot wounds, loss of limbs, and leprosy. The woodcut illustrations, many by Johann Ulrich Wechtlin, are among the earliest European depictions of surgery. The gaze in these illustrations and throughout the text belongs to the surgeon. Little attention in the text or image is paid to the recovery or long-term rehabilitation of the patient; the focus is on the squarely on the surgical procedure itself. The last section of the book is devoted to three Latin-German glossaries on anatomy, pathology and the medicinal uses of herbs.
- Subjects (LC)
- Anatomy, Early works to 1800, Herbs—Therapeutic use, Medicine, Medicine—History, Medical illustration, Medicine, Military—Study and teaching, Pathology, Surgery, Surgery—History, Surgery, Surgical instruments and apparatus, Wood-engraving, Wounds and Injuries—Surgery
- Title
- Des aller furtrefflichsten, hoechsten und adelichsten Gschoepffs aller Creaturen
- Description
- Walther Hermann Ryff was a surgeon employed in Strassburg in the early 16th Century. One of the highlights of this text are the 42 hand-colored woodcuts in the text, compiled from a number of Renaissance sources. Depicted in the counterfeit style, the illustrations in this book would have implied eye witness knowledge and discovery. In this way, Ryff’s book asserted itself as a credible description of anatomy (though its illustrations were far from anatomically accurate). The text of this book relied on lectures in anatomy and physiology, compounded from other sources. His audience was the ‘gemeine,’ or common man, and its composition in German, rather than Latin, ensured it would have a wider audience. In this way, Ryff’s book would have been indispensable to new readers as a compilation of Renaissance knowledge about the body. The book also offers evidence about early printing history. The wood-blocks for this edition were reused for a set of broadsides before they were passed to a Parisian printer for new editions of Ryff’s work, and for a popular work on surgery. This illustrated the practice of passing wood-blocks from publisher to publisher, and shows how work published in one city continued to be published and disseminated in others
- Subjects (LC)
- Anatomy, Anthropometry, Early works to 1800, Medical illustration, Medicine, Printing—History, Proportion (Art), Renaissance, Wood-engraving
- 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