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. — John Shaqi
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 second treatise, _A Brief but Excellent Introduction to Anatomy_
(_In Anatomicen Introductio Luculenta et Brevis_), is, as has been
mentioned, the first work published in England which was devoted solely
to anatomy, and therefore despite its brevity it deserves some
consideration in the general history of medicine and even greater
consideration in that of English medicine. Turning our attention now to
this treatise on anatomy it should be first noted that although printed
in the same volume with the work on medical symptoms and sharing a
common title-page with that work, the treatise on anatomy has a separate
dedication to Henry Howard (1517?-1547), Earl of Surrey. It had been at
the request of Henry VIII that this young nobleman took up residence at
Windsor and lived there from 1530 to 1532 as the companion of Henry’s
son, the Duke of Richmond. Since Edwardes had dedicated the first
treatise to the Duke of Richmond on 21 December 1532, it is not
difficult to comprehend his choice of the duke’s companion for the
second dedication which bears the date 1 January 1532, or, according to
the Gregorian calendar, 1533. There is nothing remarkable about this
latter dedication, which contains the usual flattery, except for the
final passage. There the author remarked upon the ignorance of anatomy
among physicians, sometimes with lethal results. He recognized that the
subject of anatomy was a difficult one, hence his treatise has been
written with brevity and clarity. Later, as he promised, if opportunity
were to be granted to him he would write a more elaborate work.
Hereafter, if God permit, I shall compose a complete book of anatomy
in which I shall further the opinions of all the learned, to which my
own opinion will be added. I could have done this at present but not,
however, with the same effort or with the form of an introduction
preserved. It remains that this little book, which we have enlisted in
the service of the commonwealth, may be pleasing to you, for it
recognizes the existence of those very few unlearned physicians by
whose mistakes many perish, from which this fact will be gathered,
that no parts of the body should be unknown to physicians.
This promise of a more extensive work in which the author was to include
his independent anatomical observations, presumably based on further
human dissection, appears not to have been fulfilled or, at any rate,
there is no record of any such later and more extended anatomical
treatise by Edwardes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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