Johannes de Ketham and others, 28 March 1500

KETHAM, Johannes de (fl. 1455–1470). Fasciculus medicinae. – PETRUS DE TUSSIGNANO (fl. 1400). Consilium pro peste evitanda. – MUNDINUS (c.1270–1326). Anatomia. – RHASIS (c.854–c.925/35). De aegritudinibus puerorum. Venice: Johannes and Gregorius de Gregoriis, de Forlivio, 28 March 1500.

The first illustrated anatomical book (Stillwell). Third edition in Latin, the first to include the Rhasis’ De aegritudinibus puerorum. The collection of medical tracts which circulated as the Fasciculus medicinae was attributed since the first edition in 1491 to Johannes de Ketham. He has now been convincingly identified as Hans von Kircheim, professor of medicine at Vienna. He was not the author, however, since the collection was already in circulation by 1400, but he used the collection with his students. The present edition’s woodcuts are attributed to Giovanni Bellini and originally appeared in the first edition in 1491 from the same press. Of the 10 woodcuts, the first eight appeared in the 1493 edition, one depicting the sickroom of a man with the plague is a close copy of one also from the 1493 edition, and another, the dissection cut, is an almost identical copy from the 1495 edition. The present edition also includes Mundinus’ influential Anatomia, first included in the 1493 edition. Completed in 1316 and based largely on Galen and Arabic writers, Anatomia nonetheless introduced firsthand accounts of the structures described – and the work's concision and systematic arrangement made it the most popular anatomy before Vesalius.

‘The typography and artistic qualities of this edition of the Fasciculus make it of interest far beyond the world of medicine. It was the first printed medical book to be illustrated with a series of realistic figures: these include a Zodiac man, bloodletting man, planet man, an urinoscopic consultation, a pregnant woman, and notably, a dissection scene which is one of the first and finest representations of this operation to appear in any book’ (PMM 36). H *9776; BMC V 351; BSB-Ink F-55; CIBN K-7; Essling 588; GW M14183; Goff K-15; Klebs 573.3; ISTC ik00015000.

Median folio (308 × 205mm). 34 leaves. 10 woodcut scenes and diagrams, woodcut ornamental initials (woodcut of Petrus de Montagnana on a1 with several small wormholes neatly repaired, with corresponding but smaller repairs to a2, several woodcuts shaved close to or just past rule, a few light stains to margins). Modern calf (spine slightly faded with rubbing to ends and board tips, some scratches). Provenance: ‘In Usum Mon[aste]rii S. Pauli 1686’ (inscription to woodcut of Petrus de Montagnana).