Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 374

-1539 Interiorum corporis humani partium viva delineatio [Legend above male]. Perutilis anatomes interiorum mulieris partium cognitio. . . . [Legend above female]. Veneunt apud Joannem Ruellem, commorantem in vico Jacobaeo, sub signo Caudae Vulpinae 1539] 2 ll. 34.5 cm. x 30 cm.

The anatomical fugitive sheet or broadside, in vogue during the first half of the sixteenth century, was printed on one side of one or more large sheets of paper. These broadsides were then pasted together and folded to a convenient size to form the final illustration. It is believed that they were issued largely for the convenience of students, because book prices were very high until the late sixteenth century when books became more widely available. However, the significant number of artists and publishers active in their production suggests that there was also great demand among the general population to satisfy their desire for knowledge of the human body. Fugitive sheets reached the height of their development with the work of Remmelin (see No. 456) in the early seventeenth century but continued to be issued as late as the 1690s. Their very nature limited their survival and they are now extremely rare. In the late 1530s, fugitive sheets with superimposed flaps, such as the present two, began to appear. The flaps contained depictions of the body's organs and were used to illustrate the internal makeup of both the male and female. Broadsides with flaps constitute only a small portion of the known fugitive sheets and represent the earliest form of this effective method of illustration, which is still in use today. These two figures are similar to others of the period and were printed by Jean Ruelle (fl. 1539-1574) who sold them in the Jacobean district of Paris under the sign of the wolf's tail. When received by the University of Iowa Libraries, the male and female figures had each been neatly cut and pasted to the interior of the original boards, which previously were the binding for Avicenna's Libri canonis, (Venice, 1527). The University Conservator has dry cleaned, washed, and remounted each figure and reassembled the flaps and legend as originally printed. The female figure is lacking a portion of the flap containing the vena cava and the male figure is lacking the lowest flap depicting the intestines. The foot of each broadside has also been cropped with loss of the imprint.

See Related Record(s): 456

Cited references: Wellcome 288.3-4

Gift of John Martin, M.D.