Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 113
JOHN ARDERNE (fl. 1307-1370) De arte phisicali et de cirurgia. Generalstabens Litografiska Anstalt 1929 [2] ll., [1] l. of plates (550 x 43 cm. folded to 43 x 26 cm.). 43 cm.
Most of what is known of Arderne's life comes from autobiographical details included in his manuscripts as well as inferences that can be made from the scope, content, and quality of his writing. It is believed that he may have received his medical education at Montpellier where he would have been exposed to the teachings of Henri de Mondeville (see No. 95) and Guy de Chauliac (see No. 107 ff.). He served in France and Spain during the Hundred Years War (1338-1453) where he was a surgeon in the party of Henry Plantagenet, Duke of Lancaster, and later of John of Gaunt, King of Castile and Leon. He is believed to have been present at the Battle of Crécy in 1346 and soon thereafter to have returned to England as a successful and experienced surgeon. He was widowed soon after his marriage in 1348, after which he settled in Newark, then an important center and meeting place of Parliament. He practiced in Newark until 1370 when he moved to London and began his extensive writings on medicine and surgery. Arderne's treatises show that he was a widely-read and well-educated surgeon who espoused high ethical principles and standards of patient care. He was a competent operator whose stress on surgical cleanliness, principles of wound treatment, and methods of controlling hemorrhage were ahead of his time. His illustrated manuscripts were innovative because he attempted to portray living pathology. Nevertheless, he remained firmly in the grip of his era as shown by his reliance on astrology and herbal therapeutics. Arderne's works consist of a number of handwritten treatises each of which deals with a different aspect of medicine or surgery. Over sixty manuscripts are still preserved, and it appears that his works were widely copied and circulated for several centuries following his death. When viewed in their entirety, his works form a comprehensive system of surgery as it was known and practiced in the fourteenth century. He wrote on such subjects as: wounds, diseases of women, headache, diseases of the eye, fevers, bloodletting, insect bites, epidemic sore throat, hysteria, hiccough, gout, retention of urine, extraction of teeth, intestinal obstruction, and diseases of the male genitalia. His work on anal fistula was perhaps the most popular because he successfully operated for this condition and gained considerable fame and fortune as a result. The original manuscript from which the present facsimile was made is MS. 118 in the Kungliga Biblioteket in Stockholm. It is considered to have been written in England about 1420 on twelve skins of vellum which are sewn together to make a scroll nearly eighteen feet long and fifteen inches wide. The writing is in three columns each separated by many colored illustrations. There are over 100 figures in the manuscript depicting normal and pathological anatomy as well as many graphically illustrated therapeutic measures and techniques. The text consists of a selection of herbal remedies and other therapeutic procedures from several of Arderne's works, together with extracts from other well-known medical texts of the time.
Cited references: Cushing A235; Waller 454
Gift of John Martin, M.D.
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