Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 220.1

JEAN FERNEL (1497-1558) Ioan. Fernelii Ambiani universa medicina : ab ipso quidem authore ante obitum diligenter recognita, & quatuor libris nunquam ante editis, ad praxim tamen perquam necessariis aucta. Apud Andream Wechelum 1578 'Editio postrema' (last edition) [7], 248 p. : ill. 34 cm.

For more information on this author or work, see number: 219

This is an uncommon posthumous edition of Fernel’s landmark work that served as a medical textbook for many decades. Fernel is generally considered to be the person who established physiology, pathology, and therapeutics as standard and discrete categories of medical inquiry. According to PMM [sic], “Both physiology and pathology had, of course, existed in rudimentary form before Fernel; but he was the pioneer who gave these subjects their names and established them as separate systems.” The first work in this volume is Fernel’s groundbreaking treatise on those subjects… Fernel was physician to Catherine de Medici, whose infertility he was credited with curing, and subsequently to Henri II, to his wife, and to his famous mistress, Diane do Poitiers. Fernel was an influential reformer during his lifetime, as he insisted that medical studies be based on clinical observation more than on ancient authorities. “His insistence that physicians should study the human body and not rely on tradition may well have inspired his pupil, Vesalius, to the latter’s great anatomical studies” (Heirs of Hippocrates). – bookseller’s blurb

Cited references: Osler 2574 (1577); Wellcome I #2203 (1577); NLM 16th c. #1465 (1577)

John Martin M.D. Endowment