Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 203

THOMAS VICARY (1490?-1581) The anatomie of the bodie of man. The edition of 1548, as reissued by the Surgeons of St. Bartholomew's in 1577. Published for the Early English Text Society by N. Trübner 1888 4, viii, 336, 8, 18 pp., 3 plates (port.), 2 illus., 4 maps (1 fold.). 21.6 cm.

Vicary was surgeon to King Henry VIII and in 1541 was appointed first master of the newly formed corporation of barbers and surgeons. He was also the first known surgeon of London's St. Bartholomew's Hospital and published the first English work on anatomy. Copies of Vicary's anatomy, initially published in 1548, no longer exist and the present reprint was made from the 1577 edition, the earliest now in existence. A large part of Vicary's work was based on an anonymous medieval English manuscript of about 1392 which contained passages from Henri De Mondeville and Lanfranco of Milan. Vicary begins his work by outlining the essential qualities of a surgeon, noting that the surgeon should be of the finest character and be physically attractive because one with an ugly face can't have good manners. The treatise then continues with the human anatomy in the ad capite ad pedem manner so typical of medieval anatomies. In addition to Vicary's portrait, the book contains plans of St. Bartholomew's, maps of London, and sixteen appendices containing documents related to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, Vicary, and London in Tudor times. Part II, which was to contain Vicary's life and an index, was never published. The work has been edited by Frederick James Furnivall (1825-1910), director of the Early English Text Society and his son, Percy Furnivall (1868-1938). Also included in the work is the third edition of Percy Furnivall's Physical training for high speed competitions (London, 1888) in which he outlines a training regimen for those aspiring to be championship-caliber bicyclists. At the time these works were published, Furnivall was a student at St. Bartholomew's Hospital; he later became Hunterian professor of pathology and surgery of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

Cited references: Cushing V124; Osler 4169; Russell 847; Waller 9949

Gift of William B. Bean, M.D