Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 263

GUIDO GUIDI (1508-1569) Chirurgia è Graeco in Latinum conversa. Excudebat Petrus Galterius 1544 [35] 533 pp., illus. 35.9 cm.

Guidi, a successful Florentine surgeon, was invited to Paris in 1542 to help the French King Francis I apply the medical advances of the Italian Renaissance to French medicine. Francis appointed Guidi as his personal physician and to the chair of surgery at the newly founded Collège de France. Upon the death of Francis I in 1547, Guidi was recalled to Italy by Cosimo I, ruler of Tuscany, and became his personal physician and professor of philosophy and medicine at Pisa. Most of Guidi's works were published by his nephew, and in his De anatomia corporis humani (1611) is the first published figure of the sympathetic nervous system as well as descriptions of the anatomical structures in the pterygoid bone that bear his name: the Vidian canal, Vidian nerve, and Vidian artery. When Guidi came to Paris, he brought with him a copy of a tenth-century Greek surgical manuscript as a gift for the French monarch. Under the patronage of the King, Guidi was able to complete his Latin translation and commentary on the manuscript and published the present work. In large part, the book is a compilation of what was then known about treating wounds and fractures, particularly those conditions resulting from war wounds. Most of the book is devoted to Hippocrates' writings on ulcers, fistulas, and head wounds with Guidi's commentaries and observations, and Galen's commentaries on Hippocrates' works on fractures and joints. Also included are Galen's work on bandages as well as Oribasius' De laqueis (see No. 47) and De machinamentis (see No. 47). It is thought that many of the sketches for the more than 200 woodcuts in the book came from the drawings of the Italian mannerist Francesco Primaticcio (1504-1570) who copied and partially redrew the Greek manuscript. This book is often considered to be the finest textbook of surgery to be printed in the sixteenth century, and the various instruments, bandages, orthopedic machinery, and surgical procedures are beautifully illustrated.

See Related Record(s): 47

Cited references: Choulant-Frank, pp. 211-212; Cushing G445; Durling 2204; Osler 155; Waller 1960; Wellcome 6596

Gift of John Martin, M.D.