While the treatise is noteworthy as the first work written in England solely devoted to anatomy, the text intrinsically is of little further value except for one statement referring to the emulgent, or renal veins. ‘In the body of that one whom we dissected very recently the left branch had a higher place of origin. Very often, however, the opposite occurs, so that the right emulgent vein is carried higher in the body.’ Here we have the first reference to human dissection in England, in which, moreover, the anatomist observing through his own eyes rather than those of past authorities, noted a variation from the commonly given description of the emulgent veins, a description derived from Galen’s anatomical studies on animals. Little more can be said about Edwardes. He seems to have died about 1542,[35] and perhaps this explains why the larger work was never to be published. Perhaps, had he remained at Oxford, he might have established an anatomical tradition, and so provided the influence which his book was not to have. Today only one copy of this little treatise is known, that in the library of the British Museum, and no consideration appears to have been paid to it from Edwardes’s day to the present. However, its virtual extinction was not the result of hard usage by students such as that which determined the almost complete annihilation of Vesalius’ _Tabulae Anatomicae_. As has been said, no contemporary mentioned Edwardes, despite the fact that his book was published in London. The edition must have been a small one, and copies were not likely to have been preserved as other and better works on anatomy began to be imported from the Continent. Meanwhile the universities continued their drowsy course so far unaffected in any way by the efforts of an alumnus of one of them. The barber-surgeons and surgeons appear to have been equally unproductive of anything new, still leaning upon earlier continental writers. Yet a few individuals recognized the need for improvement. Well before the surgeons of England received official encouragement for anatomical study the surgeons of Edinburgh had asked for and obtained bodies for dissection. On 1 July 1505 the magistrates of Edinburgh granted a Seal of Cause to the Guild of Surgeons and Barbers, and this was confirmed by James IV on 13 October 1506. Among the clauses regulating the practice of the barbers and the surgeons is one giving them the body of one felon each year for an anatomy: ... and that we may have anis [once] in the yeir ane condampnit man efter he be deid to mak antomell of, quhairthraw we may haif experience, ilk ane to instrict vtheris ... and that na barbour, maister nor seruand, within this burgh hantt [practise] vse nor exerce the craft of Surregenrie without he be expert and knaw perfytelie the thingis abouewritten.[36]