Seeing science. Image, text, and nature 1500-1800 For March 2005, Princeton University Andreas Vesalius and the canonisation of the human body – res, verba, pictura1 Sachiko Kusukawa Trinity College, Cambridge, CB2 1TQ, UK [email protected] Please do not quote without permission I have not included all the pictures I discuss in this paper (I hope to be able to show them in my presentation). The images from the De humani corporis fabrica and the Kaitai Shinsho may readily be found at: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/historicalanatomies/browse.html.

Introduction My research focuses on the role of images in the formation of learned knowledge of nature in sixteenth-century Europe. Some scholars in the sixteenth century used pictures to create the object of their study which embodied their method, to form and direct an argument, to persuade and win over a witness and to help them in their discovery. In this paper, I focus on some of the functions of the images in Andreas Vesalius’ De humani corporis fabrica (On the fabric of the human body), which I believe were central to his intellectual project. Vesalius also used a picture in the dissection hall to establish his own view of the human body there. These Vesalian pictures were received and used in various ways in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; I use an example of a reception in eighteenth-century , to reflect on the complex interrelationship between res, verba, and pictura.

1 A longer version entitled ‘From Counterfeit to Canon: Picturing the human body, especially by Andreas Vesalius’ appeared in 2004 as Preprint 281 from the Max-Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, I am grateful to Professor L. Daston for the invitation to the visit that led to very helpful comments from Drs M. Fend, C. Gantet, A. te Heesen and Ms K. Müller. I also benefited from comments by Profs Daston, N. Siraisi and I. Maclean on an earlier version of the paper.

1

De humani corporis fabrica In 1543, the Basle printer Johannes Oporinus (1507-68) printed Vesalius’ De humani corporis fabrica libri septem, a book of over 700 folio (c. 43 cm x 29 cm) pages with its companion piece, the Epitome, 30 pages of large anatomical figures (over 56 cm x 40 cm).2 Vesalius called the Epitome an index and ‘pathway’ along the ‘highway’ of the De fabrica, and although it was sought and bought together with the latter, considerably fewer copies of the Epitome have survived, presumably because the pictures in them were cut up and glued together, as they were intended to be.3 The De fabrica contains a title page, a portrait of the author, and over 200 figures, some of them repeated.4 The figures vary in size - from a picture of an ossicle 5 mm across and 7 mm high to the large, full-figure myological portraits taking up a full folio page and the over- size diagrams of blood-vessels and (from the Epitome) inserted at p. 313 and p. 352 respectively, measuring about 56 cm x 40 cm.5 The well-known title page and the author portrait are in many ways a visual manifesto of Vesalius’ project.6 The title page portrays Vesalius at the centre of a theatre teeming with spectators, including the ancients, pointing at a dissected woman’s body, without the traditional accompaniment of the professor in the chair or demonstrators. Traditionally, in a dissection theatre, the text of Galen was read out, while a barber- surgeon cut open the body, and the professor commented on the text, and the demonstrator pointed to the part which was referred in the text.7 In contrast, Vesalius is

2 Cushing 1962, pp. 80, 112. Vesalius said that the pictures couldn’t be large enough, O’Malley 1964, pp. 293f. 3 O’Malley 1964, p. 184. ‘For the purposes of a beginner, however, one might argue with some justification that the account of the viscera should have accompanied that of the distribution of the vessels, as in my Epitome, a work that I intended as a sort of pathway through these books and an index to the things demonstrated in them…’ Vesalius 1998-, vol. 1, p. lv. 4 Repeats of pictures occur at Vesalius 1543a, pp. 22 and 38; 36 and 47; 48f. and 24; 14 and 67; 277 and 369. 5 Some of the small illustrations may be found at Vesalius 1543a, pp. 94, 99, 125, 143 and 250. For the size of the Epitome, see Cushing 1962, p. 112. 6 Cunningham 1997, pp. 121-128. 7 For reading the traditional public dissection scene as pictured in Johann Ketham’s Fasciculo, see Bylebyl 1990. See Vesalius’ criticism at Vesalius 1998-, vol. I, pp. li, liii. Note that the tri-partite division of labour in public dissections was maintained in Padua, even after Vesalius, Bylebyl 1979, p. 361.

2 depicted as the single person in charge of the dissection: he cuts open the body, he points to what he sees, and he seeks to understand the body as Galen had enjoined others to do. The above the dissection table draws attention to Vesalius’ emphasis on the Galenic structure of the human body, beginning with the bones, which Galen had likened to the walls of the house. The portrait of the author furthermore represents Vesalius as pursuing a Galenic project by dissecting the hand, ‘the instrument of instruments’, and the instrument, according to Vesalius, physicians have come to neglect.8 The title of the book, De fabrica humani corporis (On the fabric of the human body), was also an indication of the Galenic lineage of the work. De corporis humani fabrica was also the title given to a tract by Theophilus Protospartharius (7th century), translated by Julius Paulus Crassus and published in 1536 (Venice: O. Scotus).9 Theophilus was an author known for his work on the urine and pulse, commonly included in the articella. According to Crassus, the virtue of Theophilus (though Crassus was unsure of his exact dates or life) was that he lived after the time of Galen and was a Christian, and wrote a tract which was much shorter and more succinct than Galen’s De usu partium in seventeen books.10 To Crassus, Theophilus showed how the human body, the container of the soul, was more divine than other animals.11 Indeed, Theophilus’ work viewed the human body as a creation of God, and dealt with the hands, arms and feet (book one), lower venter (book two), middle venter (book three), upper venter (book

8 Cunningham 1997, p. 123. 9 The earliest edition I have seen is Theophilus 1537. 10 ‘Caeterum cum inter Graecos, quos sciretur, nemo post Galenum hunc in philosophia locum artificiose tractavisset, superioribus mensibus liber Theophili Protospartarii de humani corporis apparatu in manus meas inopinato incidit, idque opera Francisci Frigimelij praeceptoris mei, viri omnibus bonis artibus ornatissimi, sed praecipui Hippocratice et Galenicae medicinae illustratoris. Eum cum attentius curiosusque legissem, laetatus plane sum, et librum approbavi: dignum enim doctorum librorum lectione arbitratus sum: nam quicquid ferme septemdecim amplissimis voluminibus de membrorum usu Galenus explicavit, totum id quinque libellis Theophilus comprehendit. Quae sane brevitas neque manca est, neque obscura, aut iniucunda: quem enim Galeni, exuberans copia fatigaverit, hunc Theophili dilucida ordinataque brevitas recreavit.’ Theophilus 1556 aij v. 11 ‘Quantum enim inter homines bestiasque interest, id cuique hominis interiorem formam intuenti lucidissime patebit. Eius vero singularis excllentia, virtus, atque divinitas, ita demum intelligitur, exacteque habebitur, si erit tota humani corporis fabricatio perspecta, omnisque eius figura, atque perfectio: siquidem providens natura omnium parens aequissima, cuique animanti corpus, prout animae dignitas ac vires postulant, elargitur.’ Theophilus 1556, ai vf.

3 four), the spine, male and female generative organs (book five).12 This redacted and Christanised form of Galen’s De usu partium fitted in well with the projects both Jacobus Sylvius (1478-1555) and Johannes Guinther von Andernach (1505-74) were involved in, namely to teach the newly revived Greek medicine in manageable and summarised form: Theophilus’ De corporis humani fabrica was thus included in the 1539 edition Guinther’s Anatomicarum institutionum … libri IIII.13 Thus, in calling his work De humani corporis fabrica libri septem, Vesalius was probably aligning his work along a Christianised Galenic, anatomical work, which he appears to have read.14 Perhaps it is in this spirit that we should understand Vesalius’ gesture of pointing upwards to heaven, to God, in the frontispiece. In the preface to the Emperor in the De fabrica Vesalius conceded that pictures were no replacement for the actual experience of dissecting bodies, and that therefore students should undertake dissections with their own hands, as Galen had entreated.15 Yet Vesalius argued that the use of pictures was a matter of historical necessity, because the ancient practice of oral and first-hand instruction on dissection within households of physicians had long been abandoned.16 Vesalius also stressed the descriptive power of pictures over and above textual explanations: pictures assist understanding of anatomy, for they place the matter (rem) more exactly (exactius) before the eyes than by the most

12 ‘…hominem autem solum manu Dei creatum esse nos docent sacrae literae, aiunt enim hominem finxit glebam terrae capiens, et in faciem ipsius afflavit spiritum vitae, et factus est homo cum anima vivente.’ Theophilus 1537, 9. 13 Guinther 1539, 127-227; Guinther rearranged the numbering of some of the chapters in book one. 14 Vesalius 1998- vol. I, p. liii. 15 ‘I am not unmindful of the opinion of certain people, who strongly deny that even the most exquisite delineations of plants and of parts of the human body should be set before students of the natural world; it takes the view that these things should be learnt, not from pictures but from careful dissection and examination of the actual objects. In adding to the context of my discourse such detailed diagrams of the parts (and God grant that the printers will not ruin them!) it was never my intention that students should rely on these without ever dissecting cadavers; rather I would as Galen did, urge students of medicine by every means at my command to undertake dissections with their own hands.’ Vesalius 1998-, vol. 1, p. lvi. 16 ‘If the custom of the ancients, who trained their lads at home in carrying out dissections as much as in writing the alphabet and in reading, had been brought down to the present time, I would be very happy that we, like the ancients, should dispense not only with pictures but with commentaries as well; for the ancients only began to write about anatomical procedures when they decided it was permissible to communicate the art, not only to one's children but also to grown men from other families who were taken on because of their good qualities.’ Vesalius 1998-, vol. 1, p. lvi. See also Nutton 1988b.

4 explicit speech (explicatissimo sermone).17 The descriptive power of pictures over the text was a well-known topos: Carolus Stephanus (c.1504-64), Vesalius’ contemporary who had also been working on an illustrated book on anatomy, similarly argued that pictures, however mute, could bring things to the eyes such that no further speech would be required.18 A ‘mute’ picture, of course, referred to the saying attributed to Simonides that painting was mute poetry and poetry a speaking picture.19 This had become one of the standard classical topoi used in Renaissance debates of paragone, on the relative merits of the mimetic arts of poetry and painting.20 Vesalius does not pick up this topos, but instead invokes the usefulness of geometric or some other mathematical figure.21 Vesalius’ book contained a variety of illustrations, some of which were accompanied by instructions as to how to look at them. The series of muscle-figures (making up a coherent series with continuous landscape in the background) was arranged in a sequence in order to show layer under layer of muscle, starting with the surface of the human body.22 Vesalius directed the readers to look at a muscle in not just one figure, but compare it with its depiction in the preceding and succeeding figures in order to grasp what was above and under it.23 Looking back and forth these pictures thus enabled the reader to grasp the sense of layers, and indeed depth of a body. In the chapters after the myological series in full figures, smaller figures of particular muscles or parts of the body were introduced in order to explain more detailed points. Once the readers had a general

17 ‘Quantum vero picturae illis intelligendis opitulentur, ipsoque etiam vel explicatissimo sermone rem exactius ob oculos collocent, nemo est qui non in geometria, aliisque mathematum disciplinis experiatur.’ Vesalius 1543a, *4r. I have modified the translation at Vesalius 1998-, vol. 1, p. lvi. 18 ‘Quod siquidem ita se habet, suntque utilissima scripta rerum earum, quas diligenter investigavimus: quid obstat quo minus utilis esse debeat earum rerum per icones propositio? Nam si illa animis et ingeniis faciunt satis, hae vero, etiam oculis speciem figuramque rerum quas describimus ostendunt. Scripta quidem loquuntur; icones, quamvis mutae, res singulas ita ferunt ob oculos, ut nullum praeterea sermonem desyderent.’ Stephanus 1545, p. 8. 19 ‘Were the Athenians more famous in war or in wisdom?’, 3, Plutarch, Moralia, 346F. 20 See for instance, Baxandall 1971, pp. 98-101. Again, the literature on the genre of paragone and ut pictura poesis is enormous. 21 Despite Vesalius’ belief in the usefulness of mathematical diagrams for understanding, such diagrams were not necessarily transparent in what they represented, see John Dee’s comment in Euclid 1570, [327v]. 22 For the ingenuity of this myological series, see Kemp 1970, pp. 281f. For the background landscape, see Cavanagh 1983. Note that Vesalius recommended that the Epitome should be read from the middle, starting with the two nude figures of male and female, and then turn the pages backwards to the beginning of the book to understand the layers of muscles, and then from the middle of the book, read forwards to the end of the book, to understand the , organs and nerves. Saunders and O’Malley 1950, pp. 204f. 23 Vesalius 1998-, vol. 2, pp. 1f.

5 sense of the interrelationship among the muscles, they could thus focus on the parts. Other figures were depicted in a particular position in order to show parts that would be otherwise invisible from a normal point of view.24 Such compositions were another way that allowed Vesalius to direct the view of the reader at a body. Other figures illustrated a point about a procedure in the dissection, such as the use of a rope to move about the cadaver.25 There were also marginal figures, assisting with analogical descriptions, such as hinges resembling the sutures of the skull and figures indicating the direction of fibres and angles of muscles.26 Six out of the seven books of the De fabrica begin with large ornamental initials, and each chapter is headed by a smaller decorative initial; both sets of initials depict scenes relating to dissections, surgery and procuring a body.27 The use of differently sized or coloured decorative initials in order to signal different levels of textual breaks was a well-known convention in medieval illuminated manuscripts.28 What is somewhat unusual is Vesalius’ insertion of two initials in a section on thoracic nerves in order to explain the instrument ‘glossocomion’ mentioned by Galen as an instrument to re-set a dislocated thigh-bone.29 Although Vesalius said that he did not want to overburden readers with pictures, a large variety of pictorial material was thus included in the De fabrica, many of which were placed with great care and their functions explained in detail.30 That Vesalius had control over the form and placement of the

24 ‘The cadaver therefore leans slightly backward, enough to show the transvers septum.’ Vesalius 1998-, vol. 2, p. 50. 25 Vesalius 1998-, vol. 2, p. 234. ‘… in this illustration also you can see this septum for depicted on the left [right] in the form in which it appeared to us after being cut out and stuck to the wall with its own tackiness’, Vesalius 1998-, vol. 2, p. 50. Cf. the importance of suspending the cadaver properly so as not to be weighed down in a deformed way, Stephanus 1545, p. 348. On the rope as noose, see Park 1994. 26 Vesalius 1543a, pp. 93, 258, 296f., 307f., 323, 643, 646. 27 The large (7.2 cm x 7.2 cm) and small initials (3.5 cm x 3.5 cm) of the same letter tend to share the same theme. For instance, the initials O are scences of decapitation and boiling of the skull, and the initials Q are scenes of the dissection of a pig. 28 Sherman 1995, pp. 37-44, and Valls 1996. 29 These initials were called, perhaps anachronistically, ‘pictorial footnotes’ in O’Malley 1964, p. 149. Vesalius 1543a, p. 329. For the glossocomion, see Galen, De usu partium, VII-14 and for the history of the footnote, see Grafton 1997. 30 Vesalius 1998-, vol. I, p. 50.

6 images is clear from his text as well as his letter to Oporinus, which the latter included in the book as if to demonstrate that the printer had followed the instructions faithfully.31

The Canon of Policleitus The De fabrica was intended to, and indeed does, follow closely the order of Vesalius’ public dissections at Bologna and Padua. Vesalius acknowledged that private dissection among few students was more effective for teaching than public dissections, though he felt that public dissections should also be used for instruction because of the short supply of bodies and availability of even fewer anatomical experts.32 While the function of private and public dissections thus converged, an important distinction was maintained: Vesalius recommended that in private dissections, one should study whatever body one could come by in order to develop dissection skills and to learn about the differences of bodies and the true nature of diseases; in a public dissection, in contrast, the body should be of a man or woman of a middle age, with the most temperate complexion. Therefore, the body to be presented in public dissection should be, according to Vesalius, the kind of body against which one could compare other bodies, as one did with ‘the statue of Policleitus’.33 Policleitus (450-420 BC) was one of the most renowned sculptors of antiquity, and whom Galen often referred to.34 Galen described in his On the opinions of Plato and Hippocrates (v) how Policleitus had written a book called the Canon, which explained the principles of symmetry and proportion of the parts of the human body, namely how the parts related to one another and to larger parts, and

31 Vesalius 1998-, vol. I, pp. lix-lxii. 32 Vesalius 1543a, 547. 33 ‘At hic me negocio ita accingam, ut etiam haec omnia in uno tantum cadavere, si modo in corporum penuria id opus esset, administrare queas: ac rursus, si velis, privatim singula in varijs cadaveribus perficias: quod longe etiam est consultissimum, ne eorundem organorum partium’ve series interturbetur, ac venas quum musculi ostenduntur, aut quum nervos tractas, musculos explicare tenearis. Corpus itaque publicae sectioni adhiberi convenit, in suo sexu quam temperatissimum, et aetatis mediae, ut ad hoc tanquam ad Policleti statuam alia corpora possis conferre. In privatis autem sectionibus, quae crebrius accidunt, utile erit quodvis aggredi, ut cuiusmodi id quoque sit expendas, corporumque differentiam, veramque multorum morborum naturam assequaris. (in the margin: Bononiae et Patavij tale paravimus quale ex dimidiae parte, huius libri frons proponit.)’ Vesalius 1543a, p. 548. My italics. 34 For sources on Policleitus, see Overbeck 1868, pp. 166-175.

7 how the larger parts in turn related to the whole of the body.35 Galen frequently referred to Policleitus’ statue, the Canon, usually meaning the human body whose parts were perfectly well-proportioned in relation to each other, rather than the body with a perfectly well-balanced mixture.36 This distinction may well have served Galen to distinguish between what was beautiful and what was healthy.37 Galen also argued, however, that a good proportion among the parts of the body was a result of a good humoural balance, and referred to Policleitus’ Canon as the perfection of every type of balance.38 Such a body, Galen also stated, was rarely exemplified and could only be grasped through extraordinary dedication, experience and study.39 When Vesalius referred to the statue of Policleitus, he was thus signalling an ideal human body of excellent Galenic warrant. But the bodies used in public dissections by Vesalius were those of hanged criminals, not all of whom could be of middle age and of a most temperate complexion. In another passage where Vesalius explicitly used the word ‘canon’, he explained how one might nevertheless be able to refer to a ‘canon’ in a public dissection: I had reckoned that the series of veins occurring very rarely should not be considered by a student of anatomy other than as if now and then a sixth finger on the hand or another monstrous thing offered itself to be watched. So far, if I have observed these in public dissections, I would pass over them silently, in case candidates of this art would believe these to be seen in all bodies. But the more assiduously I have directed this to be done, not only in dissections, but also in pursuing the historia of the perfect man (historia absoluti hominis), the more obstinately have they marvelled at the monstrous things, as I have learnt by experience more than once. Meanwhile, it would be deplorable for these students to have happened on a body for a whole dissection which differed much from the canon of men, unless they had assisted frequently at the dissections of perfect and

35 Galen 1534, p. 63. For the Renaissance rediscovery and reception of this important Galenic work, see Nutton 1988a. 36 See The best constituion of our bodies, 3 , Galen 1997, p. 294. 37 Stewart 1977, pp. 125 (n. 23) and 131. 38 On mixtures I-9; The art of medicine, 14, Galen 1997, pp. 228f., 362. Cf. Stewart 1977, p. 125, no. 22. and Galen 1527, 32rf. 39 The best constitution of our bodies, 3; On mixtures, I-9 Galen 1997, pp. 293, 228f.

8 non-monstrous men, not ignoring the precepts of Galen given to us at the end of the first book of the On anatomical procedures.40

Vesalius’ disdain at the youthful penchant for monstrous things echoes a lament frequently expressed in this period.41 More important here is the implicit identification of the canonical body with the homo absolutus, the ‘perfect’ man, which was also ‘non- monstruous’. This canonical body, Vesalius cautions, can only be recognized after frequently attending dissections, which is indeed what Galen had urged students to do in the On anatomical procedures (I, 11).42 Despite the enthusiasm in the period to recover classical art, as witnessed by the statuary court of the Belvedere in the Vatican, no statue seems to have been identified as the ‘canon’ of Policleitus by 1543.43 By the 1530s, the Belvedere gardens at the Vatican housed classical statues such as the Lacoön and Apollo. Among them was a torso, lacking the , arms and legs from the knee down, which came to be identified as representing the body of Hercules, and became well-known across Europe through bronzettes, models, written descriptions and sketches.44 In the second half of the sixteenth century it was

40 My translation based on Siraisi 1994, p. 68. The Latin text reads: ‘Verum eiusmodi non nisi rarissime occurrentes venarum series, Anatomes studioso non aliter expendendas putaverim, quam si interdum sextum in manu digitum, aliud’ve monstruosum se spectandum offerret. Adeo ut si quando in publicis sectionibus haec observo, ea tanquam non essent, tacite praeteream, ne artis candidati in omnibus corporibus haec observari arbitrentur. Idque tanto, non in sectionibus solum, sed modo in absoluti hominis historia persequenda, faciendum duxi studiosius, quanto pertinacius ipsos monstruosa illa admirari, experientia non semel didici: quum interim ipsis dolendum magis esset, tale ad integram sectionem corpus obtigisse, quod ab hominum canone plurium variat, nisi forte etiam crebro absolutorum et non monstruosorum hominum sectionibus astitissent, Galeni praecepta ad finem libri primi de Administrandis sectionibus nobis datum nunquam negligentes.’ [book 7] Vesalius 1543, p. 280*, cf. Straus and Temkin 1943, p. 611. 41 On Genesis 2:21, Luther 1955-76, vol. 1, pp. 126f. Or perhaps a topos from Augustine, De civitate Dei, XXI, 8. 42 Galen, On anatomical procedures (I-11): Galen 1551a, p. 62, and pointed out by Straus and Temkin 1943, p. 612. 43 The two main works attributed to Policleitus in this period were a fragment of a throne of Neptune with amoretti, and a chalcedony intaglio of Diomedes and the Palladium, Bober and Rubinstein 1987, p. 90 (no. 52A) and pp. 155-157 (no. 123). There was some difficulty in identifying the ‘canon’ with the statue of Doryphorous, due to a defect in the manuscript of Pliny the Elder, see Bober 1995, p. 326 note 27. Haskell and Penny 1981, p. 118, date the discovery of the Doryphorous to 1863. 44 This statue may have been in the possession of the Colonna family, and then owned by the sculptor Giovanni Andrea da Bregno; it was in the Belvedere gardens in the Vatican by the 1530s. Brummer 1970, especially pp. 142-152; Bober and Rubinstein 1987, pp. 166-168. For the significance of the Belvedere Torso in this period, see Schwinn 1973.

9 known for the high praise accorded to it by Michelangelo, who used it as a model for one of the ignudi in the Sistine Chapel.45 In one source, Michelangelo is reported to have called it the ‘most perfect’ (absolutissimum) in Rome.46 In the De Fabrica, the torso is depicted as revealing the figure of renal and seminal veins. Several of the figures before and after it are also set in statuesque bodies.47 One possible way to interpret the statuesque bases for the lower venter is to see them as bodies of classical heroes, thus conveying a visual strategy of perfection - Vesalius certainly believed that the ancients were more accomplished in representing the human body than contemporary artists.48

Ways of establishing the canonical structure Although Vesalius called his project the ‘historia’ of the ‘homo absolutus’, his ‘historia’ was not just made up of singulars or lacked discussion of causes.49 Vesalius in fact classified anatomy as an important part of natural philosophy.50 Indeed his distinction between what is natural and what is not is wholly typical of the distinction made between the natural and the ‘praeternatural’ in the period and understood well by university educated physicians.51 Thus, when he juxtaposed the perfect body with the non-monstruous body, he was specifying a natural body.

45 For the Sistine chapel, see De Tolnay 1990, figs 359 and 360. ‘A mano dritta di questa cappella e un torso grande di Hercole ignudo, assiso sopra un tronco del medesimo marmo: non ha testa, ne braccia, ne gambe. E stato questo busto singularemnte lodato da Michel’Angelo.’ Aldrovandi 1556, p. 12. No written testimony by Michelangelo on the Torso seems to survive, Schwinn 1973, p. 34. 46 ‘Et ad dextram Hercules brachiis et cruribus mutilatis: hunc Michael Angelus summe laudat, tanquam omnium quae Romae videntur absolutissimum.’ Boissard 1597, vol. I, p. 11. 47 See Vesalius 1543a, pp. 356, 357, 360, 363, 365, 370, 377 and 378. 48 Heseler 1959, p. 138. Such artefacts would still only have had a role for confirming, rather than providing, the basis for discovery, as pointed out by Pigeaud 1990, p. 418. 49 For an important overview of the discipline of ‘historia’, see the introduction in Pomata and Siraisi, 2005. I am grateful to Prof. Siraisi for allowing me to see a draft of this. 50 ‘Anatomy is an important part of natural philosophy; to it, since it embraces the study of man and must properly be regarded as the prime foundation of the whole art of medicine and the source of everything that constitutes it.’ Vesalius 1998-, vol. I, p. l; Vesalius 1543a, ii. 51 As a learned professional group involved in restoring health (a natural state of the human body) from diseases (a praeternatural state), learned physicians of the period could develop quite sophisticated arguments concerning the concept of nature and its correlative terms, see Maclean 2002, pp. 234-275. For the physician, however, this perfect, natural body, cannot be a static, singular body, but a perfection of balances among a latitude of variations arising from sexual, regional and age differences, as argued by Siraisi 1994.

10 Vesalius’ discussions of frequency with which certain structures may be encountered may well be understood as a way to establish the ‘natural’ human body, since natural things occur, according to Aristotle, always or most of the time. For instance, next to the marginal heading, ‘thoracic vertebrae usually (plurimum) twelve in number’, Vesalius wrote: ‘there are twelve thoracic vertebrae; sometimes, but rarely, there is one less or one more. To have one less is rarer than to have one more. At Padua, I came across two bodies with thirteen thoracic vertebrae, but so far I have never seen one with only eleven.’52 This not only establishes the natural number of the thoracic vertebrae at 12 and other numbers as not natural, but it also indicates that he recognised degrees of rarity (between 11 and 12 vertebrae). A description of natural form based on the frequency with which it was encountered in dissections would also suggest good Galenic practice: to establish a natural form on the basis of frequent dissection, as was suggested in the On anatomical procedures.53 While the fact that he himself had not seen a case did not rule out the possibility of variation, Vesalius at other times was confident that a particular variation was well nigh impossible: ‘… thus far … no human jaw comprising a pair of bones has come my way; and though perhaps among so many myriads of people I might some day in some monstrous cross between a dog and a human observe a jaw of this type, that would not make me assert that the human jaw contains a pair of bones.’54 Here is one of the limits of the human body, a structure that can only be explained as a cross between a human and another animal, which would be against human nature. For Vesalius, however, frequency was ultimately not sufficient for determining every canonical structure, as in the case of what is now known as the ‘Os Vesalianum Carpi’, an ossicle just under the base of the little finger in the hands. According to Straus and Temkin, the tiny bone shown at N is a skeletal aberration found in just over 0.1 % of

52 Vesalius 1998-, vol. 1, p. 172. Vesalius, 1543a, p. 72. 53 See above. He also claimed that he did not affirm things that he had seen only once or twice in his dissections. Roth 1892, p. 108. 54 Vesalius 1998-, vol. 1, p. 107.

11 Caucasians; Vesalius is in the highest degree unlikely to have seen this structure more than once in his life-time.55 Yet, it is described in the picture as well as in the text: On the outside of the between the metacarpal bone which sustains the little finger and the eight carpal bone lies a bone of this type as if to fill up the vacant area which occurs here because the upper end of this metacarpal bone cannot lie entirely against the eighth carpal bone but goes slightly beyond it on the outer side. This bone, when present, seems to strengthen the joint and give some support to the metacarpal bone which sustains the little finger.56

The bone ‘when present’ implies that it is not always found, but Vesalius included it in the natural structure of the hand because it fulfilled the function of supporting the little finger. Teleology, of course, was the central point of Galen’s De usu partium, that the perfect and correct form of a part of the body was the one best adapted to execute its functions.57 Vesalius was typical of an ambitious learned physician of his time in adopting teleology as argument and studying Galenic teleology avidly; but he did not simply repeat Galen’s ‘telos’ of each part of the body, but offered his own teleological explanations throughout the De fabrica, and not just for ossicles as rare as the ‘Os Vesalianum Carpi’.58 Teleology was the reason for Vesalius favouring the less common, six-piece structure of the os sacrum over the five-piece structure, or for passing over in silence a piece of muscle called the ‘mountain of the moon’ in the hand by Giovanni Battista Canani (1515-79).59 The parts of the body depicted in the book look the way they do because of Vesalius’ commitment to teleological considerations. The case of the ‘Os Vesalianum Carpi’ highlights another point about Vesalius’ pictures – they picture something that a student or a physician could scarcely come across in their actual dissections, but something that is nevertheless part of the ‘canonical’

55 Straus and Temkin 1943, p. 630. 56 Vesalius 1998-, vol. I, p. 279, Vesalius 1543a, p. 119. 57 ‘The usefulenss of the parts of an instrument must be related to the action of the whole instrument; second, of the fact if in imagination we change every attribute of the parts and still find no other position, shape, size, contexture, or any of the other attributes necessarily inherent in bodies that would be better than those which the parts actually have, we must declare that their present construction is perfect and absolutely correct.’ Galen, On the usefulness of the parts, III-13, vol. I, p. 195. 58 See Siraisi 1997b. 59 O’Malley 1964, pp. 293f.

12 structure. Hence Vesalius’ pictures contain parts that are hardly ever visible in dissections of actual, individual bodies, they also omit (abnormal) parts that may well be encountered in the dissection hall.

Arguments of comparative authority Another way in which Vesalius established what was or was not a natural human body was by comparing it with the anatomy of other animals. The study of animal structure for the sake of understanding human structure is not in itself a new method of investigation.60 What is notable about Vesalius’ comparisons is the persuasive edge they give to his claims. Vesalius frequently refers to animal anatomy to point out the differences between human and animal bodies, perhaps most strikingly in the first figure of Book 1 chapter 9, in which the human jaw nestled on a canine jaw. The point of this picture, Vesalius explained, was to place the skull at an angle so that the insides of the eye sockets could be shown, but the canine jaw was also intended to help the reader understand Galen’s description.61 Indeed, it shows that Galen’s description better fitted the canine jaw than a human one.62 Parts of animal anatomy could also be incorporated into the figures of the human body. In Table V for the structure in the neck X, the legend reads: X: As this area in man is fully portrayed in Table VII, we have, with excessive devotion to Galen’s teaching, depicted here a muscle which is found in dogs but not in man and is regarded by Galen as the third moving the ; the whole of it can be seen in the next table, where it is marked Γ.63

60 See for instance, Aristotle, History of animals, I, 16. 61 Vesalius 1998-, vol. 1, p. 89, the figure is repeated at p. 116. 62 ‘For in dogs and apes and pigs and other animals whose canine teeth are strong and protrude, two stutures [nn in the canine skull], as I said before, or rather two harmoniae, are apparent which are not found in man…. This suture, which contains no cartilage, is so conspicuous that in dogs the bone counted by me as the foruth maxillary is divided into two. … When you observe this in a dog or an ape, consider with care how impossible it is for this suture to come between the teeth of man, who has a very short upper jaw and small canine teeth.’ Vesalius 1998-, vol. 1, pp. 102f. 63 Vesalius 1998-, vol. 2, p. 37. ‘Quoniam hic locus nihil aliud peculiariter, quam septima tabula in homine ostendisset, et quia Galeni sententiae, quum haec pingeremus, plus aequo favimus, musculum hic ex cane delineatum cernis, quo homines prorsus destituuntur, et Galeno tertius thoracem moventium habetur, sequenti tabula inter Γ notandus.’ Vesalius 1543a, p. 185.

13 In the next table, Table VI, at Γ, Vesalius writes: This part of the chest and neck should have been drawn as in the following table; but I decided it would not be entirely pointless to depict here from a dog the muscle mentioned of Galen that takes its origin (marked O) from the transverse processes of that cervical vertebrae; it is fleshy as far as the fourth rib, but at the point marked P it becomes a membranous tendon marked Q, and this extends further down to some of the ribs.64

In the commentary, Vesalius explains further: The third [muscle]g [g: Γ in Table VI] occurs only in apes and dogs, but I have included it (as I pointed out earlier) lest someone who relies too much on the text of Galen without doing any cutting may talk some nonsense about my having overlooked some muscles, an accusation that I do not deserve. … The third [muscle]h, [h: Γ in Table VI; X in Table V] which stretches along the front of the second muscle, grows out from the inner area of the transverse processi [i: O in Table VI] of the second cervical vertebra and is fleshy there. It stretches downward, taking origin also from the following vertebrae, and eventually, enlarged by these various origins, joins up with the first thoracic rib…. The fleshy part of this muscle, which is attached to the ribs, proceeds together with its membranous tendon beside the region of the second musclem [m: R in Table VI] that spreads out into fingers and is implanted into the ribs. In my public dissections I have shown quite clearly that this is what it is like in caudate apes and dogs (but it does not make its insertions in the hand-shaped pattern); but so far from being able to affirm that I have ever found or demonstrated it in man I can categorically state that humans do not have it. But in saying this I should not be taken to imply that students should set aside the authority of Galen and cease to look for it in man.65

64 I have modified the translation at Vesalius 1998-, vol. 2, p. 43. 65 Vesalius 1998- vol. II, p. 285. The alphabetical superscript in the text refers to the key to the marginal text, which I have included in square brackets.

14 The inclusion of an animal structure in the text and the figure was, as Vesalius explains, to counter the possible charge that he was somehow negligent. Because Vesalius ended up correcting many descriptions of the human body by Galen, an image of human anatomy alone (with its discrepancy with the Galenic text) would expose Vesalius to the charge that he had not looked at the body carefully enough or that he did not know his Galen well enough. By introducing the structure that matched Galen’s description into the image of a human body, Vesalius thus offered a direct point of comparison to his readers. The animal structures are there to show that Galen’s description fit animal structures better than human ones, and to show in turn how valid Vesalius’ own description of the human body was. What is being compared here is not simply animal and human structures but also the authorities of Galen and Vesalius.66 Thus, despite impressions to the contrary, not all of the spectacular anatomical figures of the De fabrica are human. Nor do these figures of the human body containing partial animal structures, strictly speaking, always depict the ‘canonical’ body. They are instead a pictorial form of adjudication that Vesalius’ description fits better the anatomy of man than Galen’s or Aristotle’s. The use of pictures to differentiate competing views of medical authorities is in itself not unique to Vesalius – Berengario da Carpi had done precisely that, albeit in a cruder form, when he used pictures to differentiate between true and false positions of the funis brachii and the salvatella.67 In Vesalius’ case, he used the composite animal-human figure to achieve a similar effect. As is clear from the text cited above, letters in the images were vital points of contact between text and image.68 Using letters in the picture as keys to names was what Vesalius had already done with his anatomical tables published five years earlier, in 1538.69 In the De fabrica, the figures were also keyed to the text, and the keys were inserted in the inner margins of the main text ‘so that they would be for the reader a sort of commentary to the text by indicating in which [figure] the part mentioned may be

66 For another case, see Vesalius 1998-, vol. 2, pp. 37f., 270f. 67 Berengario 1521, CXLXIr-CLXXIIr. 68 Note that Vesalius was particularly anxious that the printer Johannes Oporinus would print the figures in such a way as to ensure that the letters were visible.Vesalius 1998- vol. I, p. lx. 69 Singer and Rabin 1946.

15 seen’.70 Linking the text and the image by a key was not that unusual, but the extent to which Vesalius bound his text with the figures was extraordinary: on Nancy Siraisi’s count, this ‘visual commentary’ would require a conscientious reader to look over to the figures over 100 times for a six-page section on the differentiation of muscles.71 The keys thus linked different parts of the book, guided the turning of the pages back and forth, to understand the depth of the body, to connect parts of the text with parts of the picture, and to understand Vesalius’ view of the human body. It broke with the standard expectation of a linear reading of a book, from beginning to end.72

Images in the dissection hall Before the publication of the On the fabric of the human body, Vesalius had participated in the controversy over the best treatment in cases of of inflammation of the thorax, commonly known as ‘pain in the side’. He referred to the controversy in the Anatomical tables as one of his motivations for publishing the anatomical figures in the first place in 1538.73 The next year, in A letter, teaching that in cases of pain in the side, the

70 My interpolation and modification of the translation in Vesalius 1998-, vol. 1, p. lix. ‘In continua orationis serie nusquam figuris indicandis interrupta, literulas expendes, quas in officinis super lineares nuncupatis: quae illa respondent annotationibus, quas interiori margini non tanta industria, quanto labore et taedio, adhibui, ut lectori velut scriptorum essent commentarius, exprimens in quanam figura pars, cuius mentio incidit, spectari possit.’ Vesalius 1543a, *5r. 71 Siraisi 1994, p. 64. For the importance of the interdependence of text and image for Vesalius, see also Nutton 2001. 72 A smiliar break from this standard expectation occurs in Gessner’s Historia animalium, as pointed out in Blair 2004, . I am grateful to Prof. Blair for allowing me to read a draft of this paper. 73 See figure B, the azygos (literally, a vein ‘without a mate’), depicted in the second figure: This unpaired vein [the azygos], which is described as nourishing eight lower ribs, we have never seen arise below the right auricle of the [in man], though in dogs and monkeys [it arises] a little above it. Wherefore it is better for pain in the side tending downwards venesection rather than purgative medicine should be used; as for the view of Hippocrates, I hold Galen to have spoken unclearly about this vein in the second book of the De victus ratione in morbis acutis (On the way of sustenance in acute diseases). Moreover, from the place of origin of that vein and because of the agreement and direction of its fibres or texture, it seems not completely unreasonable to open the inner vein of the right elbow always for pain in the side at the level of the third or fourth rib or lower. Thoracic pain usually affects the middle region, therefore, venesection should be considered rather for the right [than the left] side; a point which I wish would be deemed more worthy of deliberation by anatomists. I have modified the translation in Singer and Rabin 1946, p. 9.

16 axillary vein of the right elbow be cut, and that the melancholic juice is purged from the branches of the portal vein extending to the fundament, Vesalius introduced a picture [Fig.], ‘… so that I may place the affair before your eyes a little more clearly, I shall, in passing, delineate the thoracic veins and thus we may tackle the matter in the manner of the mathematicians (more mathematicorum).’74 Vesalius explained that the azygos vein, at I, issued from the vena cava, above the auricle of the heart and protruded to the right of the human body and fed almost all the costal veins K’s and L’s of the thorax; this structure, Vesalius believed, clarified an obscure point in Galen, and allowed Vesalius to make a new point in the contemporary debate about treating pains in the side. Vesalius’ point was that given that the azygos vein issued from the vena cava above the heart and protruded to the right, in most cases of pains in the side (cases K L and F), it was better to blood-let from the right elbow A, rather than from any other place or use purgatives which would mean drawing noxious blood through a vital organ such as the heart. In 1540, a German student, Balthasar Heseler, attending Vesalius’ dissection at Bologna reported how Vesalius used this picture in this dissection hall: First of all, he [Vesalius] said, I shall show you today how true my theory about the venesection in pain in the side is, about which there is today among us great controversy, and I shall demonstrate to you that the picture which I have published is true and corresponds to this body. You will see how from the vena cava one branch issues running to all the ribs and nourishing the whole thorax. He pointed out (ostendebat) to us the pictures which he had published in his little book and in his Tables and he compared them with the present subject, and to be sure, they corresponded completely. For I saw this with my own eyes, as I stood quite near.75

74 Translation by Saunders and O’Malley in Vesalius 1948, p. 71. ‘Verum et negocium dilucidius paulo ob oculos collocem, venas theoracis obiter delineabo, quo mathematicorum more rem aggrediamur’. Vesalius 1539, p. 40. 75 ‘… vobis hodie demonstrabo quomodo vera sit illa nostra opinio de sectione venis in pleuresi, de qua apud nos hodie magna est quaestio: et demonstrabimus vobis hanc depictionem esse veram quam aedidimus et convenire cum hoc nostro subiecto: Videbitis quomodo oriatur a cava vena unus ramus tendens ad omnes costas et enutriens totum ipsum pectus etc. Ostendebat nobis illas depictiones quas in libello suo et in tabulis suis aediderat et conferebat eas cum subiecto praesenti et certe omnino sic

17 The two pictures mentioned here are the one in the booklet on the ‘pains in the side’ and the second figure in the Anatomical tables. I think here, Heseler recorded much more than just the fact that Vesalius did indeed use pictures in the dissection hall. Using a picture in the dissection hall seems (even to us) a reasonable thing to do, given that in dissections, seeing a particular detail could be quite difficult as one would see all sorts of other things, such as muscles, fat, cartilages, nerves and veins, intertwined and mixed together.76 But this particular picture was not simply helping the student see in the body what may be difficult to see by picking out certain features; the azygos vein as depicted here, in fact, can never be seen in the human body, as it does not issue from above the heart, is not as large or does not stretch out as much to the right as Vesalius would have it.77 Yet, as I have just quoted, at least one student was persuaded – the picture ‘corresponded completely’ with the body. In effect, Vesalius won over a witness in the dissection hall – to believe that his interpretation of the azygos vein was true. What Heseler saw ‘with his own eyes’ was – given that the structure depicted cannot be found in a human body – what was presented in the picture, which in turn described what was required for Vesalius’ own interpretation in the text to be true. The picture of the azygos vein thus mediated between the text and the body, and became the instrument for forming assent. The use of pictures was thus necessary in the dissection hall even in the presence of the body, as the pictures functioned as a means to establish a correspondence between Vesalius’ interpretation (as expressed in the text) and the human body. The case of the azygos vein was not unique; in fact Vesalius constantly pointed at pictures or drew sketches on the dissecting table during his demonstrations.78 Nor was the dissection that Heseler attended unique in the use of pictures – in 1537, even before Vesalius’ Six tables were printed, another student, Vitus Tritonicus Athesinus, copied down sketches that Vesalius had done in the dissection hall at Padua, and one of them

conveniebant, ego enim ea vidi hisce meis oculis, prope enim adstiti.’ Heseler 1959, pp. 236f., translation by Ericksson modified, my italics. 76 A point also made in Kemp 1996, p. 49. 77 Singer and Rabin 1946, pp. lvif. 78 E.g. Heseler 1959, pp. 137, 219.

18 clearly shows the exaggerated location and configuration of the azygos vein.79 It is intriguing to note that Heseler’s way of looking at the human body in the dissection hall ends up something akin to the experience of reading, that is, reading Vesalius’s interpretation of the structure of the human body with a picture of the body that reflects his own interpretation. Vesalius pointed at (ostendo – an action and verb most appropriate for somebody who was formerly an ostensor) his picture, directing his students to read the body in a particular way. 80 Heseler’s case shows how those attending public dissections could come to see and understand the human body in the Vesalian way by means of pictures. It would be a little unfair to judge Heseler as being ‘fooled into’ believing that he saw in the body what wasn’t there. After all, anatomy is a messy business, and an impressionable student can be susceptible to the words of a charismatic teacher. Nor would it be fair to criticize Vesalius for cynical manipulation of his audience through pictures – clearly he believed that he was in the right, and went as far as to correct the text of Galen.81

Res, verba, pictura All good humanists would have agreed that a proper match between res and verba was a necessary foundation of a true description.82 Vesalius’ innovation was to make pictures an integral part of establishing a match between res (the human body) and verba (his interpretation of it). In his books, when descriptions of the human body clashed – when it became Vesalius’ word against the word of a revered ancient, it was necessary to show that the res fitted better one set of verba than another. This was done via pictures. In the dissection hall, it was also the pictures that made the students believe that the body

79 O’Malley 1958, fig. 2. 80 I thank Professor Lorraine Daston for pointing out the significance of looking, pointing and reading, and allowing me to read an earlier version of Daston 2004. 81 To Galen’s text: ‘Eodem autem modo in plurimis animantium ad thoracis sinistras partes profecta vena, quintam dorsi verterbram ascendit.’, a marginal note was added: ‘Ves. Hic et graeca et latina depravata sunt, aut Galeni sententia plane veritate repugnat. Nam praeter caetera dextras hic pro sinistras legendum videtur.’ Galen, De venarum arteriarumque dissectione Liber, ab Antonio Fortolo Ioseriensi Latinitate donatus, et ab Andrea Vesalio bruxelliensi plerisque in locis recognitus, in Galen 1542, vol. 1, col. 183, as pointed out in Singer and Rabin 1946, p. 63, note 153. 82 See the essays in Kessler and Maclean 2002.

19 (res) matched Vesalius’ verba. Neither process of establishing a match between res and verba (in the book or in the dissection hall) could succeed without pictures. Yet pictures themselves were dependent on the accompanying verba. Without the verba, it would have been impossible to determine which of the five skulls represented the ‘natural’ form, for instance. Without the text, a novice would have been unable to tell that a particular muscle arrangement embedded in the human figure belonged to an animal, and that thus it showed how wrong Galen was. In other words, pictures would not make sense to the reader without the text; without the text that explained what the reader ought to be seeing in the picture, the precise point of the picture would be lost. Those who were illiterate or could not read Latin would not have understood these pictures. Pictures could be used by Vesalius in the way that he did, because it could be assumed that pictures depicted the res. Vesalius praised the quality of the figures for their ‘ratio picturae’ (probably referring to the gradation of shadows produced by thick lines), but he never explained how and why such a ‘ratio’ might warrant a reliable relationship between the picture and the res.83 He had little to say about how artists depicted the body.84 For Vesalius, the reliability of pictures to represent the res was ultimately subsumed under the reliability of the author.85 For instance, Vesalius vividly described how with the help of his friend Gemma Frisius (1508-55), he stole from the gallows the skeleton of a burnt criminal, just as Galen had done (On anatomical procedures, I, 2).86 He also provided a detailed ‘catalogue’ (as described in the index) of women he had dissected – for instance, prostitutes hanged in Paris and Padua, a mistress of a monk of St Anthony’s at Padua (whose skin was quickly flayed by students in order to avoid identification), and an old woman who starved to death.87 Such a listing was another way to demonstrate Vesalius’ expertise in anatomy, as was a display of an array of dissection

83 ‘Praecipuum studium in tabularum impressione erit impendendum, quod non vulgariter ac scholastice, velutque simplicibus duntaxat lineis sint expressae: nusquam picturae ratione (si interdum locum quo res delineatae suffulcirentur, excipias) neglecta.’ Vesalius 1543a, *4r For this passage, see Kemp 1993, p. 97. 84 Cf. ‘Non mihi in cubiculum, aut eo monumentis aut publicis suppliciis data corpora, etiam septimanis aliquot asservabo, neque sculptoribus et pictoribus me ita exercitandum dabo, ut saepius ob eorum hominum morositate me illis infeliciorem esse putarem, qui ad sectionem mihi obtigissent.’ Vesalius 1546, p. 194. 85 Siraisi 1997, p. 30. 86 Vesalius 1998-, vol. 1, pp. 382f. 87 Vesalius 1543a, pp. 538f.

20 instruments.88 These and other rhetorical devices helped Vesalius make the case that he had got the structure of the human body right – just as Galen’s dissections were fashioned in the epideictic style of rhetoric in order to generate faith (pistis) in the beholder.89 None of res, verba or pictura, on its own, could establish Vesalius’ knowledge of pristine anatomy. The complex interdependence of the three, achieved through a reading practice that defied the linear, narrative model, established the object of the study, the homo absolutus. Given this role of pictures as an integral and necessary part of establishing the object of Vesalius’ new anatomy, it would be off the mark to expect the pictures of the De fabrica, divorced from their textual contexts, to reveal a story of the ‘triumph’ of naturalism, empiricism or observation.90 After all, the homo absolutus was an object a student of anatomy would never come across in an actual dissection of a particular human body.

The reception of Vesalius’ pictures In its design and use of pictorial material, the De fabrica is probably the most complex of sixteenth-century printed books, a result, no doubt, of an unusual extent of authorial control over pictures, enabled by Vesalius himself paying for their preparation.91 It also remained unique. The Vesalian pictures were plagiarised profusely through the next two centuries, for instance by Thomas Geminus (Compendiosa totius Anatomie delineatio, 1545), Ambroise Paré (Anatomie universelle, 1561), Juan de Valverde (Vivae imagines, 1566), Caspar Bauhin (De corporis humani fabricia, 1590), Volcher Coiter (Externarum et internarum principalium humani corporis partium tabulae, 1573), Thomas Bartholin (Anatomia…cum iconibus novis accuratissimis, 1655).92 Many an author acknowledged the supremacy of Vesalius’ pictures, explained

88 A point that concerned Galen also; for the representation of instruments in surgical manuscripts, see Jones 1998, pp. 87-89, and Brunschwig 1497, XIX r. 89 Von Staden 1995. 90 Cf. the optimistically entitled chapter ‘The great leap forward’, Roberts and Tomlinson 1992, pp. 125- 143. 91 Pace Ivins 1952. Vesalius 1998-, vol. 1, lxii, explicitly states in the preface that the pictures were prepared at his own expense. Oporinus’ will, however, suggests that the printer thought he had some rights over them, Steinmann 1969, pp. 200f. 92 An (incomplete) list of works that copied Vesalian figures may be found in Cushing 1962, pp. 122-53.

21 their pictures in terms of where they differed from Vesalius’ and some even copied the alphabetical keys, so as to facilitate comparison between Vesalius’ pictures and their own.93 Vesalius’ pictures had indeed become a canon against which others judged their own. The copied pictures were, however, rarely accompanied by the original texts. Thus the original interdependence of text and image was lost, as was therefore the original, descriptive and argumentative function for which Vesalius created the images. Of the works that drew on the De fabrica, none matched the complexity of the original. One of Vesalius’ pictures – the bones of the hand – was copied in an eighteenth- century anatomical work, entitled the Kaitai Shinsho.94 This was the first translation of a European (Dutch) anatomical book into Japanese spearheaded by the physician Gempaku Sugita (1733-1817). Sugita’s project was first triggered by the pictures of Johann Adam Kulmus’ Ontleedkundinge Tafelen (tr. Gerardus Dicten, 1731) and Caspar Bartholin’s Anatomia (both contain some copies of Vesalius’ figures), which were bought for Sugita by his feudal lord in the hope that it would be useful.95 What struck Sugita about the books was that, apart from the fact that he could not read a word of it, the pictures looked very different from the Chinese figures he had been accustomed to.96 Sugita’s wish to check Kulmus’ strange-looking pictures against a real body was realised very quickly, as soon afterwards, in March 1771, he was invited to attend the dissection of an executed criminal (a woman of about 50 years old nicknamed ‘Green Tea Hag’). He invited along his friends Junan Nakagawa and Ryôtaku Nagano. Sugita brought along his Kulmus; Nagano also brought along a copy of the same book which he happened to have. The dissection was done by a 90-year-old outcast.97 Comparing the dissected body with the

93 Coiter 1573, AA3r; Valverde 1566, A2vf., pp. 30, 38; Cushing 1962, p. 98. 94 Translated by Gempaku Sugita, Ryôtaku Maeno, Junan Nakagawa, Genjô Ishikawa, Hoshû Katsuragawa; the artist was Naotake Odano; the original text in classical Chinese (Kanbun) of the Kaitai Shinsho is reproduced in Sugita 1918; Sugita’s memoir of this translation project, Kotohajime, completed over 40 years later (Sugita 1971), is translated into English in Sugita 1969. See also Macé 1994, Wagenseil 1959, Beukers 1991. For the analysis of Sugita’s project, I draw heavily on the important work by Kuriyama 1992. 95 Sugita 1969, p. 24. 96 Sugita 1969, pp. 24, 29. Sugita expressed a similar impression earlier, when he saw Laurentius Heisterus’ Heelkundige Onderewyzingen: ‘Needless to say, I could not read the book, not a word or a line. But the illustrations of the book looked markedly different from those in Japanese or Chinese books.’ ibid., p. 19. 97 For a somewhat forced analogy of these outcasts as ‘invisible technicians’, see Low 1996.

22 pictures in their book, they found that they were in ‘perfect agreement’, and that there was no (Chinese) division such as the six lobes and two auricles of the or the three left lobes and four right lobes of the .98 This was an important point to make because Sugita had read the views of the Shôgun’s official doctors who had observed dissections and wondered if the discrepancy between the body and the Chinese theories was due to the difference between Chinese and Japanese bodies.99 For Sugita, the Dutch books matched better the Japanese body. The bones scattered around the execution field further confirmed the precision of the Dutch pictures. On the way back from the dissection, deeply impressed, the friends agreed to translate Kulmus’ book. The next day, they started, without a dictionary; Sugita did not even know the alphabet. As Sugita later put it, the enterprise proceeded as if they were on a rudder-less ship at sea (e.g. one long spring day would pass without being to able to figure out the sentence: the eyebrows are the hair growing above the eyes’).100 With several more like-minded men joining them and meeting six or seven times a month, four years and eleven drafts later (and some additional dissections, mainly done on animals), the Kaitai Shinsho was published. It consisted of one volume of pictures and four volumes of text. Twenty-five of the twenty- seven plates in the original Kulmus were copied, though often with fewer keys, and not all of Kulmus’ texts were translated; pictures were added from the works of Thomas and Caspar Bartholin, Steven Blankaart, Volcher Coiter, Ambroise Paré, Jan Palfijn and others. Another unacknowledged source was Valverde’s Vivae imagines (possibly the 1568 Dutch edition), from which, inter alia, the title page, the bones of the hand, and a skeleton of the upper body were copied. Valverde’s engravings of the hand (with the ossicle under the small finger) and the skeleton were copies of Vesalius; in the Kaitai Shinsho the ossicle is missing and only the upper half of the skeleton is shown. Sugita’s project started, as it were, with a match between res and pictura, in order to acquire verba – Dutch. The Dutch, of course, were the exception to Japan’s self- imposed isolation during the Tokugawa period and symbolised to the Japanese European

98 Sugita 1969, p. 30. 99 Sugita 1969, p. 31. Cf. Sylvius’ view of the difference of ancient and contemporary human bodies, Cunningham 1997, p. 132. 100 Sugita 1969, p. 34.

23 culture. Attitudes towards foreign learning had been relaxed under Shôgun Yoshimune from the 1720s, and Sugita’s was an age when Dutch gadgets and devices had come to be conspicuously consumed and peddled for popular entertainment.101 At the same time, more Dutch books on scientific subjects were introduced to Japan, notably, Rembert Dodonaeus’ Cruijdeboeck.102 Lords of domains, artists and physicians looked to European learning for practical and national utility. Sugita too, regarded his reform of medicine based on human anatomy as useful for medical practice and for the benefit of the nation.103 So what did Sugita’s copying the pictura and learning the verba amount to? In the preface to the Kaitai Shinsho, Sugita stressed the need to change one’s ‘outlook’ in order to understand the book.104 The mere process of dissection would not, he claimed, open the eyes of those who believed in the old theories – because their mind would persist in its errors.105 Sugita’s own outlook, though drawing heavily on European anatomical knowledge, shared little with Kulmus’ mission to teach anatomy to surgeon apprentices via dissection and books, and it was a far cry from Vesalius’ vision of the revival of the practice of Galenic dissection.106 For Sugita, the ability to change one’s outlook, as Kuriyama has suggested, had a moral and spiritual value of self-reform – it tied in closely with the Confucian sense of moral probity and the ability to comprehend things clearly, without being obstructed by the mind’s inattentions.107 Sugita’s kind of dissection involved a different kind of seeing altogether – so much so that that dissection was given a new name - ‘kaitai’ instead of the traditional ‘fuwaké’ – but it did not amount to fully Western European ways of observation or empiricism.108 My excursion into the distant and faint episode in the reception of Vesalius was initially motivated by trying to make a rather banal point about how pictures do not transmit well – one might assume that pictures showing an object could be transmitted

101 Sugita 1971, pp. 98f. 102 See Walle and Kasaya 2001. 103 Sugita 1971, p. 103. 104 Sugita 1971, p. 148. 105 Sugita 1971, p. 149. 106 For Kulmus’ project, see Sachs 2002. 107 Kuriyama 1992, pp. 39f. 108 Cf. also the transformation that Western perpsectivist painting undergoes in Japan, Inaga 2001.

24 universally; that they communicate across language barriers and cultures; that perhaps pictures are ‘transparent’ windows onto the world.109 Sugita saw that Kulmus’ pictures matched the dissected body, but he also needed to acquire, painstakingly, the ability to read the words that surrounded them – for Sugita was trying to grasp and understand Dutch medical knowledge as embodied in a book.110 The image and the text in tandem constituted a complex, active process of ‘seeing’ an object that amounted to some sort of understanding or knowledge. But it strikes me that the connection between seeing, knowing and reading is something that we historians of science have not yet understood well.

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