Details
VIDIUS, Vidus (1509-1569). Chirurgia è Graeco in Latinum Conversa. Paris: Pierre Gaultier, 1544.
2° (360 x 235mm.). In Latin, interspersed with some Greek. Woodcut initial letters, 210 woodcut illustrations, including 30 full-page, of surgical tools, apparatus, operations and bandaging techniques. (Small wormhole affecting all pages preceding g4, some marginal waterstains, one or two illustrations just trimmed.) 19th-century blind-panelled diced calf wih gilt names of author and title on front and back covers respectively, contemporary title gauffered in gilt on green fore-edge (rebacked, original spine laid down, extremities worn). Provenance: Thomas Stafford (early inscription: "... Med. : Doctr. & chirurg ordinar. Leydensis &c."); Alfred Heacock Whittaker (bookplate).
FIRST EDITION of "the most beautiful textbook of surgery to be printed in the 16th century" (Herrlinger History of Medical Illustration p. 143). Vidius was a Florentine who became chief physician to King François I and first Regius Professor of Medecine at the Collège de France in 1542. This is his Latin translation of a collection of mainly Greek unpublished medical texts by Hippocrates on ulcers, fistulas, head-wounds, fractures and surgical equipment; Galen on bandages; and Oribasius Sardianus on apparatus for mending fractures and dislocations. These texts were rediscovered in a 10th-century illustrated Byzantine manuscript acquired by Lorenzo de' Medici in 1442. Vidius's source for the illustrations was probably a 16th-century copy of the Nicetas Codex owned by his patron, Cardinal Ridolfi.
Ridolfi sent a presentation copy of the manuscript, in Greek, to François I, with Vidius's translation: it may have been this that secured Vidius his post as Regius Professor. When Vidius arrived in Paris, François asked him to make the manuscript into a book. Vidius actually lived with the printer Gaultier at Petit-Nesle, and Benvenuto Cellini, who also lived there, may have participated in the design of the book. Mortimer/Harvard French 542; Wellcome Historical Medical Library 6596; Bibliotheca Walleriana 1544.
2° (360 x 235mm.). In Latin, interspersed with some Greek. Woodcut initial letters, 210 woodcut illustrations, including 30 full-page, of surgical tools, apparatus, operations and bandaging techniques. (Small wormhole affecting all pages preceding g4, some marginal waterstains, one or two illustrations just trimmed.) 19th-century blind-panelled diced calf wih gilt names of author and title on front and back covers respectively, contemporary title gauffered in gilt on green fore-edge (rebacked, original spine laid down, extremities worn). Provenance: Thomas Stafford (early inscription: "... Med. : Doctr. & chirurg ordinar. Leydensis &c."); Alfred Heacock Whittaker (bookplate).
FIRST EDITION of "the most beautiful textbook of surgery to be printed in the 16th century" (Herrlinger History of Medical Illustration p. 143). Vidius was a Florentine who became chief physician to King François I and first Regius Professor of Medecine at the Collège de France in 1542. This is his Latin translation of a collection of mainly Greek unpublished medical texts by Hippocrates on ulcers, fistulas, head-wounds, fractures and surgical equipment; Galen on bandages; and Oribasius Sardianus on apparatus for mending fractures and dislocations. These texts were rediscovered in a 10th-century illustrated Byzantine manuscript acquired by Lorenzo de' Medici in 1442. Vidius's source for the illustrations was probably a 16th-century copy of the Nicetas Codex owned by his patron, Cardinal Ridolfi.
Ridolfi sent a presentation copy of the manuscript, in Greek, to François I, with Vidius's translation: it may have been this that secured Vidius his post as Regius Professor. When Vidius arrived in Paris, François asked him to make the manuscript into a book. Vidius actually lived with the printer Gaultier at Petit-Nesle, and Benvenuto Cellini, who also lived there, may have participated in the design of the book. Mortimer/Harvard French 542; Wellcome Historical Medical Library 6596; Bibliotheca Walleriana 1544.