RIOLAN, Jean.
A Sure Guide; or, The Best and Nearest Way to Physick and Chyrurgery
London, printed by John Streater, and to be sold by George Sawbridge, 1671£2,850.00
Folio. pp. [8], 1-288, [12], 24 double plates each comprising individual engraving with facing letter-press explanation, first bound as frontispiece, the rest following the table. Roman and italic letter, printer’s woodcut device to title-page, woodcut initials and decorative printer’s ornaments. In contemporary sheep over boards, end-papers renewed, front pastedown with Fox Pointe bookplate. Upper hinge repaired, joints rubbed and scuffed, lower cover worn, slight browning to text and water-stain to upper margin of plates of final section not touching engravings.
Jean Riolan the younger (1580 – 1657) was a French anatomist who held the Regius Chair in Anatomy and Botany at the Paris Faculty of Medicine and was principal physician to Marie de’ Medici, the second wife of Henry IV. In his time, he was “the best-known anatomist in Europe” and was declared “the greatest anatomist on earth” by his contemporary Thomas Bartholin (Guerrini, chp. 1). A ‘stern defender of traditional [Galenic] medicine’ (Mani 121), Riolan is perhaps chiefly remembered for his opposition to the circulation of blood proposed by William Harvey; his was the only critique of De motu cordis that Harvey saw fit to reply to in print. The term ‘Riolan’s arcade’ is still used by doctors today to refer to the central anastomotic mesenteric artery.
The present work is the third edition of the English translation by the English botanist and physician Nicolas Culpeper (1616 – 1654) of Riolan’s Encheiridium Anatomicum et Pathologicum. First published in Latin in 1648 and reputed ‘the best anatomical textbook of its time’ (Heirs of Hippocrates 451), Riolan’s work consists of ‘an Anatomical Description of the whole Body of Man, and its Parts, with their Respective Diseases’ (A1r), set out in six books. The first five each deals with a different part of the body: Book 1 with the bones, Book 2 with the belly and bowels, Book 3 with the chest, Book 4 with the head, Book 5 with the arms and legs. Book 6 contains ‘a new Description of the Bones, by a Method first invented by our Author’. At the end there are twenty-four tables containing one hundred and eighty-four figures, each facing a leaf of explanatory text, ‘all of which are referred to above a thousand places in the Books, for the Help of young Artists’ (A1r). The several parts of each figure are marked by alphabetical letters which are keyed to the main text by means of superscript letters, a great aid for the reader.
The plates are drawn from the first illustrated edition of Vesling’s Syntagma Anatomicum (1647) and had been previously been used in Culpeper’s English translation of Vesling published in 1653. As Culpeper’s preface notes, Riolan’s Encheiredium anatomicum had ‘obtained so great reputation, that it hath often bin Reprinted in most European Languages, and received with the highest applause of the Learned’ (A2r). “Riolan added greatly to anatomical knowledge, and his textbook was widely used for many years, being translated into several languages.” (Heirs of Hippocrates 451)
Wing R-1525. Cushing R170; Heirs of Hippocrates 451; Osler 3810; Russell 705. Guerrini, Anita, The Courtiers\\\\\\\' Anatomists: Animals and Humans in Louis XIV\\\\\\\'s Paris (Chicago: 2015). Mani, Nikolaus, “Jean Riolan II (1580-1657) and Medical Research”, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 42.2 (1968).In stock
