1907-8.]. 8vo, pp. [ii], 18, [ii] blank, with 106 loose leaves of photographic reproductions; title-page slightly foxed and browned, with further light browning and soiling throughout, with occasional minor edge-wear; loosely housed within the original grey cloth backed printed card portfolio, with printed label on spine, itself house within original maroon slip case with printed label, extremities somewhat rubbed and worn, but otherwise a good copy. Attractive and uncommon early 20th century facsimile, slightly reduced, of the original manuscript drawings that are believed to have formed the template for the famous woodcut illustrations for Guido Guidi’s famous ‘Chirurgia’ of 1544, considered to be one of the most beautiful scientific books of the Renaissance.
The work was edited by Henri Auguste Omont (1857-1940), the librarian of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, who notes in the introduction that the present work, published under the auspices of the Bibliothèque Nationale Département des Manuscrits, reproduces the illustrations from their Latin manuscript 6866 - the dedication copy to King Francis I of Guidi’s translation of a tenth-century illustrated Greek manuscript collection of works by ancient Greek surgeons, compiled by the Byzantine physician Nicetas. Brought to Italy by Janus Lascaris in 1495, this codex (now Florence, Laur. Plut. LXXIV, 7) was used by the Florentine physician Guido Guidi (ca. 1508-69) for the preparation of this Latin translation. Guidi, a native of Florence and grandson of the painter Domenico del Ghirlandaio, was physician to Francis and the first professor of medicine at the Collège de France (1542-48). The woodcuts, probably by Francois Jollat, were based on drawings that were copied in turn from the tenth-century codex.
‘This series of facsimiles... with its wealth of detail and valuable references, has served as the foundation for all subsequent studies on this aspect of Vicus Vidius’s work’ (Kellett, The School of Salviati and the Illustrations to the Chirurgia of Vidus Vidius, 1544, Med Hist. 1958 Oct: 2(4):264-8.)
"In 1542, Guidi presented an illustrated copy of this manuscript, along with his own Latin translation (likewise illustrated), to Francois 1 of France [...] Guidi had his Latin translation printed by Pierre Gaultier, a printer residing at the castle of Benvenuto Cellini, where Guidi also lived during the time he spent in Paris. The Chirurgia was the only one of Guidi's works published during his lifetime. The exquisite woodcuts of apparatus adorning Guidi's text are copies of the drawings in Guidi's Latin manuscript, which have been claimed, on the basis of a brief reference in the manuscript, to be the work of the Italian mannerist Francesco Primaticcio (1504-1570). However, for both stylistic and logistical reasons, it is more likely that the drawings were made by the school of Francesco [Rosso] Salviati (1510-1563); [...] The images themselves have been traced back from the Nicetas Codex to the commentary on the Hippocratic treatise Peri arthron (On the joints) composed in the first century B.C. by Apollonius of Kitium (fl. 81-58 B.C.)" (Norman 954).
The text (not reproduced here) included Latin translations of treatises on surgery by Hippocrates (De ulceribus, De fistulis, and De vulneribus capitis), Galen (De fracturis, De articulis, De officina medici, and De fasciis), Oribasius (De laquis and De machinamentis), and others, with commentaries by Galen and other ancient writers. Hippocrates' treatise on dislocations and Soranus' work on bandages are illustrated with woodcuts, many of them full-page, which illustrate the treatments discussed in the text.