Introduction to Anatomy, 1532: With English translation and an introductory essay on anatomical studies in Tudor England by C.D. O'Malley and K.F. Russell.Edguard, David
History
Introduction to Anatomy, 1532: With English translation and an introductory essay on anatomical studies in Tudor England by C.D. O'Malley and K.F. Russell.
Edguard, David
Anatomy -- Study and teaching -- England -- History -- 16th century; Human anatomy -- Early works to 1800
The next anatomical publication in England was a new edition in 1553 of
Geminus’s plagiarized anatomical plates, but this time with an English
text by Nicholas Udall, best known as the author of the first important
English comedy, _Ralph Roister Doister_, and utterly lacking in
knowledge of anatomy. In consequence one may correctly hazard that this
work, published with commercial rather than pedagogical motives, would
not contribute much to knowledge of anatomy in England, even though the
text was now in English. It is true that Vesalius’ descriptions of his
illustrations were put into English, the first translation into English
of any portion of the _Fabrica_, but the text which now replaced the
_Epitome_ of the earlier edition of 1545, like Vicary’s work, is
predominantly indebted to that same fourteenth-century manuscript
compiled from the writings of late medieval surgeons. Finally, the
sheets of this work were reissued in 1559 with a new preface written by
Richard Eden which aimed to delude the public into the belief that the
publication had been revised.
About this time, too, a small series of anatomical fugitive sheets with
superimposed flaps made their appearance in England. One, at least, had
two leaves of English text to explain the woodcut and is nearly always
discovered bound into the 1559 reissue of Geminus’s book. The fugitive
sheets, like their continental predecessors and followers, added very
little to anatomical knowledge and must have been for popular
consumption.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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