Details
VASSAEUS, Lodovicus. In anatomen corporis humani tabulae quatuor. Venice: Officina Erasmiana Vincentii Valgrisii, 1549.
8o (148 x 98 mm). Printer's woodcut device on title and verso of last leaf. (Some occasional pale spotting.) Modern decorated boards. Provenance: Jan Van der Hoeven (bookplate, signature dated 1907 on front free endpaper).
A dissection manual first issued in Paris, 1540, and widely re-issued. Like many dissection manuals it was unillustrated until the edition of Paris, 1553, when a few woodcuts were added. That dissection manuals would continue to be published without illustrations even after the works of Berengario da Carpi, Vesalius, and Estienne were issued reflects the slow advance of anatomical teaching in response to innovation. "Advocating a rigorous method derived from his teacher Sylvius, Vassé directed the anatomists to begin with the stomach organs and then proceed to the chest organs and connected muscle layers, the head and brain, and finally the limbs with their muscles-an order determined by the speed at which the parts decayed. Vassé's text... is conspicuous for its clear system of cross-references and its columnar divisions for subsections and marginal summaries. Precise nomenclature was essential for the new systems of anatomical classification, and it was Vassé who established the tradition of multilingual terminology in Latin, Greek, and (where the terms existed) Arabic." (Cazort, Kornell, Roberts, The Ingenious Machine of Nature: Four Centuries of Art and Anatomy [1996] 24-25).
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A dissection manual first issued in Paris, 1540, and widely re-issued. Like many dissection manuals it was unillustrated until the edition of Paris, 1553, when a few woodcuts were added. That dissection manuals would continue to be published without illustrations even after the works of Berengario da Carpi, Vesalius, and Estienne were issued reflects the slow advance of anatomical teaching in response to innovation. "Advocating a rigorous method derived from his teacher Sylvius, Vassé directed the anatomists to begin with the stomach organs and then proceed to the chest organs and connected muscle layers, the head and brain, and finally the limbs with their muscles-an order determined by the speed at which the parts decayed. Vassé's text... is conspicuous for its clear system of cross-references and its columnar divisions for subsections and marginal summaries. Precise nomenclature was essential for the new systems of anatomical classification, and it was Vassé who established the tradition of multilingual terminology in Latin, Greek, and (where the terms existed) Arabic." (Cazort, Kornell, Roberts, The Ingenious Machine of Nature: Four Centuries of Art and Anatomy [1996] 24-25).