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Table of contents :
PREFACE
CONTENTS
ILLUSTRATIONS
I. THE BEGINNINGS: Tritheim, Champier, and Gesner
II. THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES: Medical Book Sales, à Beughem, Van der Linden, Haller, and the Rise of Medical Biobibliography
III. MEDICAL SUBJECT INDICES: Ploucquet, Forbes, Callisen, and Billings; Choulant and Osier; Keynes and the Rise of Personal Bibliography
APPENDICES
INDEX
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e (great jfflebtcal Ptitftograpijerö A STUDY

IN

HUMANISM

By

JOHN F. FULTON Rosenbach Fellow in Bibliography 1950

Philadelphia U N I V E R S I T Y OF P E N N S Y L V A N I A 1951

PRESS

Copyright 795/ UNIVERSITY O F P E N N S Y L V A N I A PRESS Manufactured in the United States of America London: Geoffrey Cumberlege Oxford University Press

To the Memory of Three Great Bibliographers

CONRAD GESNER 1516-1565 ALBRECHT von HALLER 1708-1777 JOHN SHAW BILLINGS 1838-1913

"Mais le deuil qui s'impose à tous, le deuil que les bibliographes et les bibliophiles des deux mondes ont le plus douloureusement ressenti, c'est celui qu'a provoqué la perte récente de notre respectable éditeur, M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot, le promoteur de ce livre, le maître et l'ami dont nous ne pourrons jamais oublier ni les enseignements ni la cordiale affection! . . . S'il est un métier au monde, ingrat, pénible, ardu, mal rétribué, peu considéré, c'est, à coup sûr, celui de bibliographe. "Un bibliographe! qu'est-ce que c'est que ça?" disent les gens du monde, et ça est un euphémisme. . . . "Un bibliographe! disent les savants et quelques lettrés; mais c'est un sous-ordre qui a son utilité! D'abord il ne porte ombrage à personne, attendu qu'il est systématiquement écarté de l'administration des bibliothèques publiques; puis il peut, dans sa sphère modeste, nous rendre quelques services; quand nous sommes embarrassés, il nous renseigne à l'endroit des sources spéciales; il nous indique les curiosités scientifiques; c'est un catalogue ambulant. . . . , etc., etc." P . DESCHAMPS

Brunet's Manuel du libraire et de l'amateur de livres, 1878

PREFACE OVER THE YEARS many distinguished scholars have been drawn into the book trade, and private collectors and the great libraries throughout the world owe an incalculable debt to their learning. F i r m s such as the house of Quaritch, Maggs, L u d w i g Rosenthal and his sons, the Olschkis, Lier, Rappaport, and—among our more immediate contemporaries—E. P . Goldschmidt, Ernst W e i l , Henry Sotheran, Raphael K i n g , and J. I. Davis, to mention only a few, have helped fill our shelves with some of the greatest classics of literature and science. T h e erudite annotations which they invariably publish in their catalogues are models of clarity and accuracy and contain a body of recondite information often to be obtained from no other source. In this country we also have had many scholars dealing with books—men such as the late W i l f r i d M . Voynich and the Goodspeeds—but D r . A . S. W . Rosenbach has proved himself the most widely informed bookman of our time, and it is safe to say that more rare books of commanding importance have passed through his hands than through those of any other man living or dead. H e has been ruthless in his insistence upon bibliographical accuracy in everything that he has published, and that he should have had the generous impulse to found this Fellowship in Bibliography bespeaks his breadth and vision and his sympathy with scholarly endeavor. I deem it a particular privilege, therefore, to have the opportunity to speak as a Rosenbach Fellow and I wish to thank the Committee warmly for the honor implied by the invitation. In preparing these lectures for press I was materially assisted by the staff of the Y a l e Medical Library. T h e appendices listing the works of L u d w i g Choulant and Geoffrey Keynes were comvii

Vili

PREFACE

piled by Mrs. Henrietta T . Perkins, chief cataloguer; Miss Madeline E. Stanton, librarian of the Historical Library, helped with the Billings materials and with the general editing; to Miss Elizabeth H . Thomson, research assistant in the Library, I am indebted not only for preparing the typescript, but for valuable aid in organizing the lectures and for verifying all references. JOHN F . FULTON PUBLICATION N O . 2 6

The Historical Library Yale University School of Medicine

of describing a useful and beautiful book fully and adequately is recognized as one of the necessary elements in a librarian's education. It is a noble art because its perfection rests within an unattainable ideal. Considered as necessary work in the interest of humanity and general enlightenment, bibliography gains ground as the years pass. Times and conditions might be pointed out when bibliographers were tolerated. But to the person fortunate enough to possess the sacred fire of the art, his work is its own reward, and he blesses the men, living and dead, who kindled the spark within him. This is true even more of the art of bibliographical compilation, or the recording of sources of study in the interest of students and librarians. Let it be said openly: It is its own reward!

T H E NOBLE ART

J. CHRISTIAN B A Y

Conrad Gesner (1516-1565) An appreciation. 1916

the father of

bibliography.

CONTENTS Page

ILLUSTRATIONS

I

xiii

T H E BEGINNINGS:

Tritheim, Champier, and Gesner II

THE

SEVENTEENTH

AND EIGHTEENTH

1 CENTURIES:

Medical Boo\ Sales, à Beughem, Van der Linden, Haller, and the Rise of Medical Biobibliography III

26

MEDICAL SUBJECT INDICES:

Ploucquet, Forbes, Callisen, and Billings; Choulant and Osier; Keynes and the Rise of Personal Bibliography

55

APPENDICES

87

INDEX

103

xi

ILLUSTRATIONS (Following page 108) Frontispiece

John Shaw Billings at the age of twenty-five (from the memoir by Fielding H. Garrison).

Figure

i

Top: First page of Tritheim's initial bibliography.

Figure

Below: First page of Tritheim's alphabetical index— the most important innovation of the bibliography. 2 Portrait of Symphorien Champier from Allut's Etude biographique & bibliographique sur Symphorien Champier, Lyon, 1859.

Figure

3

Figure

4 Large woodcut showing the beheading of St. Symphorien with Champier and his wife kneeling before the martyr. This cut occurs four times in the volume, first on verso of xli of De medicince claris scriptoribus.

Figure

5 Title-page of Canappe's translation of Guy de Chauliac's Prologue, & chapitre singulier published by Etienne Dolet.

Figure

6 Title-page of Rabelais' translation of the Aphorisms of Hippocrates.

Figure

7

Figure

8 Title-pages of Dolet's pirated and unexpurgated editions of 1542 of Gargantua and Pantagruel which cost him Rabelais' friendship and almost sent them both to the stake.

Title-page of volume containing Champier's De medicince claris scriptoribus (first tract) (numbered leaves i-xli and dated on xli "Lugdun, xvii. Januarii, Anno CCCCCvi").

Title-page of the 1532 Pantagruel of Rabelais.

ILLUSTRATIONS

XIV

Figure

9 Contemporary print of the Grand Hostel de Notre Dame de Pitie du Pont-du-Rhone in which Rabelais served as chief physician.

Figure 10

Portrait of Otto Brunfels.

Figure ii

Printed outline of Brunfels'thesis presented for public disputation when he was seeking his medical degree at the University of Basel.

Figure 12

Title-page of Brunfels' Catalogus illustrium medicorum, Strasbourg, 1530, with woodcut border by Hans Weiditz.

Figure 13

Contemporary portrait of Conrad Gesner.

Figure 14

Title-page of first edition of Gesner's Bibliotheca universalis, Zurich, 1545.

Figure 15

First page of the John Riolan sale catalogue, Paris, 1654.

Figure 16

Title-page of the John Riolan sale catalogue, London, 1655.

Figure 17

Title-page of William London's catalogue of "the most vendible books in London," 1658, and a page of text.

Figure 18

Title-page of auction sale catalogue of Sir Kenelm Digby, London, 1680.

Figure 19 Title-page of sale catalogue of Christopher Terne, Thomas Allen, and Robert Talbor, London, 1686. Figure 20 Title-page of Francis Bernard's sale catalogue, London, 1696. Figure 21

Title-page of sale catalogue of the libraries of Sir Thomas Brownfe] and Edward Brown[e], his son, London, 1711.

Figure 22

Title-page of second edition (1651) of van der Linden's annotated bibliography, De scriptis medicis, Amsterdam.

ILLUSTRATIONS

XV

Figure 23 Title-page of the -Bibliographia medica & physica of Cornelius á Beughem, Amsterdam, 1681. Figure 24 Contemporary painting of Albrecht von Haller. Figure 25 Title-pages of Haller's four great Bibliothecae. Figure 26 Title-page of Nomenclátor scriptorum medicorum of Israel Spach, 1591. Figure 27 Title-page of Martin Lipen's Bibliotheca realis medica, 1679. Figure 28 Engraved frontispiece of Lipen's Bibliotheca realis medica. Figure 29 Title-page of de Vigiliis von Creutzenfeld's Bibliotheca chirurgica, 1781. Figure 30 Title-page of Ploucquet's Initia bibliothecae medicopracticae et chirurgicae, 1793. Figure 31

Title-page of John Forbes's A manual of select bibliography, 1835.

Figure 32 Title-page of Callisen's Medicinisches SchriftstellerLexicon, 1830. Figure 33 Title-page of the Specimen Fasciculus of the IndexCatalogue, 1876. Figure 34 Title-page, 1945 edition of translation of Choulant's History and bibliography of anatomic illustration. Figure 35 Contemporary portrait of Johann Ludwig Choulant. Figure 36 Title-page of Bibliotheca Osleriana, 1929. Figure 37 Page from manuscript of Geoffrey Keynes's bibliography of John Evelyn.

CHAPTER

I

T H E BEGINNINGS: TRITHEIM, CHAMPIER, A N D G E S N E R is often thought to have originated with the art of printing, but there were bibliographies of a sort long before the end of the manuscript age. Papyri and parchment rolls in the great library of Alexandria were listed by author and in some instances roughly classified by subject, but the indices, being on parchment rolls, were difficult to consult.1 In the second century A.D. Galen compiled two classified bibliographies of his own writings,2 in the first of which he grouped the five-hundred-odd books that came from his prolific pen into seventeen categories, namely, anatomical works, grammar, philosophy, rhetoric, etc. This therefore stands as the first attempt at a classified bibliography by a medical writer and it is also a forerunner of the personal bibliography which I propose to describe in Chapter III. BIBLIOGRAPHY

In 731 the Venerable Bede likewise appended to his Ecclesiastical History of Britain a catalogue of his own writings, which consisted of a short-title list of some forty works 1 KENYON, F. G. Books and readers in ancient Greece and Rome. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1932. viii, 136 pp. See also Kenyon's Ancient books and modern discoveries. Chicago, Caxton Club, 1937. [ 1 0 ] , 84 pp., 30 pi. 2 GALEN. De libris propriis and De ordine librorum suorum ad Eugenianum. Both are to be found in the first collected edition of Galen (Greek) published by the Aldine Press in 1525. The Greek and Latin texts are available in Kiihn (Opera omnia, Leipzig, 1830, ig, 8-48, 49-69). 1

2

THE BEGINNINGS

roughly classified. 3 And there were also early bibliographies of a general nature—biobibliographies in fact—for they consisted largely of lists of men prominent in the Church with primary emphasis upon their lives rather than upon their writings. The first bibliographies of the manuscript age in which emphasis was shifted from the lives to the written works of authors were compiled between 480 and 500 by St. Jerome and Gennadius Massiliensis.4 The example of these two men was followed by others, but little fundamental advance occurred in the science of bibliography until the invention of printing. JOHANN TRITHEIM

The first so-called modern bibliography was the work of a Benedictine bishop, Johann Tritheim, 4 whose career was both colorful and unusual. Having run away from an unhappy childhood to obtain his education, young Tritheim was returning home to an uncertain welcome when a storm drove him to seek shelter in the old Benedictine abbey of Sponheim in the Rhine valley west of Mainz and Kreuznach. He found the atmosphere there so salubrious and so stimulating to his intellectual interests that he remained and, having completed his novitiate, he became in 1483, at the surprisingly early age of twenty-one, the twenty-fifth Abbot of Sponheim. Although fortune had played a part in his becoming a 3 BEDE. Notitia de se ipso el de libris suis. This is to be found at the end of any edition of the Ecclesiastical History. 4 BF.STERMAN, T . The beginnings of systematic bibliography. London, Oxford University Press, 1935. xii, 81 pp., 1 /. This is an invaluable treatise on the historical backgrounds of modern bibliography

LIBER DE SCRIPTORIBUS ECCLESIASTICIS

3

scholar, his innate qualities and characteristics led him inevitably into his subsequent activities, for he possessed a deep love of books (and the desire to acquire them in large numbers), patience, and a strong sense of order and system. Almost immediately he began the task of reorganizing and cataloguing the library of the monastery, which consisted of forty-eight dog-eared volumes; when he had finished he had built up a handsome collection of some two thousand printed books and manuscripts, not a few of considerable rarity. The knowledge of books thus acquired brought him so many enquiries that he conceived the idea of gathering the information into a compendium. After five years of painstaking research he submitted the manuscript to the Bishop of Worms, and two years later (1494) issued his Liber de scriptoribus ecclesiasticis (Fig. 1 ) from the press of Johann Amerbach in Basel.5 This folio volume of some three hundred pages listed nearly a thousand writers arranged chronologically, and recorded approximately seven thousand books. A short account of each author was included as well as an alphabetical index of the authors (Fig. 1). This bibliography was followed by others—all works of genuine research and containing a certain amount of historical and biographical material. Among the other writings of the prolific Abbot, his Catcdogus illustrium virorum (Mainz, 1495) should be mentioned, for this was an important forerunner of the great bibliographies of the eighteenth century. 5 T R I T H E I M , J . Liber de 6 II., 140 numbered leaves, University Library (Fig. 1 ) . available is that given in C. 1325-29.

scriptoribus ecclesiasticis. Basel, J . Amerbach, 1494. 1 1. There is a copy of this incunable in the Yale The most detailed account of Tritheim's life readily G. Jocher's Allgemeines Gelehrten-Lexicon, 1 7 5 1 , 4,

4

T H E BEGINNINGS

These pioneer efforts in systematic bibliography carried Tritheim far beyond the sporadic attempts of his predecessors and entitle him to the name of "father of bibliography," 4 although this cognomen is more commonly accorded to a man who flourished five decades later—Conrad Gesner. Tritheim's primary motive was to compile a work of reference— which in itself was an advance over the work of the earlier bibliographers whose lists were often designed chiefly as propaganda for the Church. The addition of the alphabetical index was also a step forward of the greatest importance, establishing, as it did, a precedent for other bibliographers to follow. But much as we admire the contributions to bibliography of the learned Abbot of Sponheim, our main theme concerns medical bibliography, and we must now turn to the first medical bibliographer, that eminent humanist and patron of arts and letters, Symphorien Champier, physician of Lyons. SYMPHORIEN

CHAMPIER6

The ancient city of Lyons was an exciting place in which to live in the sixteenth century. 7 Rich, populous, liberal, and progressive, the city had welcomed the learned Florentine merchants who had flocked there during the preceding cen® ALI-DT, P. A. Elude biographique & bibliographique sur Symphorien Champier. Lyons, N. Scheuring, 1859. xxiv, 430 pp., 1 /. Although Allut gives admirably detailed bibliographical descriptions of many of Champier's works, the bibliography as such is incomplete. See Ballard, J. F . and Pijoan, M., " A preliminary check-list of the writings of Symphorien Champier, 1 4 7 2 - 1 5 3 9 . " Bull, med. Lib. Ass., 1940, 28, 182-88. 7 M O N F A L C O N , J . - B . Manuel du bibliophile et de l'archéologue lyonnais. Paris, Adolphe Delahaye, 1857. 389 pp. See also Le livre d'or du Lyonnais du Forez et du Beaujolais. Lyon, La bibliothèque de la ville, 1866. 391 pp.

RENAISSANCE AT

LYONS

5

tury, bringing with them the artistic and literary culture of Italy. Lyons became in due course the intellectual capital of France, for it enjoyed greater freedom of thought and religion than did Paris, which was under the direct influence of the inquisitorial Sorbonne and the Court. And not only was the city distinguished by the presence of many men of letters, but by the scholar-printers who had been attracted thither in such numbers that Lyons had become the center of the new art. This society had already felt the warmth of the Italian Renaissance and was eager to extend it. They were concerned with all the stirring events of the time—the discovery of a new world by Columbus, a new heaven by Copernicus, with the introduction of gunpowder, with the revolt against the papacy, and with the Protestant Reformation, and out of their concern came some of the great classics of our literature —books which sometimes led both author and printer to the stake. In the words of Fisher: 8 Thousands of separate little rills of doubt, criticism, and protest which had been gathering volume for a generation suddenly flowed together into a brawling river of revolt. The public mind recoiled from the discipline of the past. Old limitations upon thought and learning fell away. Reuchlin in Germany went back to Hebrew, Valla in Italy and Bude in France to the real Latin and Greek of antiquity. A spirit of brilliant forward-reaching enlightenment came into Europe, challenging traditional knowledge and shaming old abuses or superstitions by its scorn and mockery.

The spread of this enlightenment from Italy to France has been vividly described by Doolin: 9 8 FISHER, H . A . L . A history of Europe. London, Edward Arnold & Co., 1936. 1 3 0 1 pp. f p p . 498-99]. 9 DOOLIN, W . Wayfarers in medicine. London, William Heinemann, Ltd., 1 9 4 7 . 284 pp. [p. 5 3 ] .

6

T H E BEGINNINGS

On the sixth day of a frigid January in 1517, there set out from Bologna, that "grave, arcaded city of learning," a brilliant retinue of courtiers in the train of le gros garçon—François I—the youthful King who, gay and flushed with the victory of Marignano, was returning to France. Their leader is a magnificent figure in a great wide-sleeved cloak of gold, lined with zibeline furs; there are ladies in the company, graceful camp-followers in peacock velvet and white ermine, with soldiers a many, men cast in the mould of a Bayard, or a Gaston de Foix, to pay them court en route. In this glittering suite goes, too, an ageing man: he is Leonardo, the Florentine, who travels as Master of the King's pageants. For him it is a mournful leavetaking; as he stands by his horse, there comes the young Raphael to bid him adieu; Francesco Melzi, his closest friend, to whom have been entrusted the Master's most precious possessions, his notebooks, is to ride with him across the hills to the last ferry. As the elderly and nerve-shaken Leonardo mounts, his hand—that had been wont to trace without falter lines of a delicacy incomparable in their draughtsmanship—quivers already on the bridle-rein. As he faces Alpwards, up through the long valleys of Savoy to an alien land, this, his last journey, is a symbol. It is the Renaissance passing from Italy to France. A m o n g the distinguished L y o n s g r o u p that f o r m e d the heart of the n e w m o v e m e n t in F r a n c e in the first half of the century

were

Symphorien

Champier, François

Rabelais,

C l é m e n t M a r o t , M i c h a e l Servetus, E t i e n n e Dolet, H u m b e r t and

Hugues

Fournier,

Jean

Canappe, and

many

more,

w h i l e E r a s m u s , R o b e r t Estienne, a n d C a l v i n w e r e not infrequent visitors. Sebastien G r y p h i u s of R e u t l i n g e n

became

dean of the classical printers of L y o n s a n d set out to publish a series of the L a t i n classics that w o u l d rival those of the A l d i n e Press in f o r m and utility, and, according to Christie, 1 0 1 0 C H R I S T I E , R . C . Étienne Dolet. The martyr of the Renaissance A biography. London, Macmillan St Co., Ltd., 1899. xxii, 570 pp.

1508-1546.

POPULARIZATION OF VERNACULAR

7

he "contributed more than any other printer to the popularizing of literature and to the cause of intellectual progress." He also printed books in Hebrew, Greek, and French—all languages frowned upon darkly by the Sorbonne. Gryphius, however, had not yet arrived in Lyons when Symphorien Champier committed his first book to press. Champier (Fig. 2), already showing the restless vanity, broad culture, and phenomenal activity that characterized his mature years, 11 began his distinguished literary career with a number of undated pieces issued at Lyons in 1498, when he was twenty-six years old. But his first important contribution lay in his publication, in 1503, of a French translation of the best-known work of the famous Avignon surgeon, Guy de Chauliac, whose fourteenth-century writings had been the most widely circulated of any French medical author. Champier states in his preface that the book was intended for unlettered barbers who could not read Latin. Although the book had been published in French in 1478, this new edition, issued at a time when the Sorbonne was attempting to prevent the spread of knowledge among any but the learned, caused a sharp outcry, especially among the reactionary but highly influential members of the Paris medical faculty. When protests began to reach him, Champier retorted: "The ancients spoke their own tongue, why should not we?" Elsewhere he said eloquently that the most patriotic service any man could render his country was to speak his native tongue. Le Guidon en franfoys, one of the most useful and popular of the texts translated into the ver11 FULTON, J. F. "Early medical humanists. Leonicenus, Linacre and Thomas Klyot." Nciv Engl. /. Med., 1 9 3 1 , 205, 141-46; 158-59.

8

THE

BEGINNINGS

nacular, passed through four editions during Champier's lifetime—the last a handsome folio published in 1537, two years before his death. T h e book for which Champier is particularly noted and the one for which he merits inclusion in these lectures is a medical biobibliography which appeared at Lyons in 1506 under the title De medicince claris scriptoribus

(Figs. 3 and

4). It was issued in a small octavo volume with four other tracts, all of them undated, but leaf 41 bears the colophon date. T h e great figures of medical history are described in rough chronological sequence beginning with Apollo, Aesculapius, Achilles, and some of the other Greek gods and heroes, and continuing with historically recognized figures such as Pythagoras, Hippocrates, Plato, and Aristotle. A f ter brief thumbnail sketches of the lives of each of the authors an attempt is made in certain instances to list their more important works. T h e book, however, is disappointing as a bibliography, for the books in question are not described and are rarely dated; from this point of view the De scriptoribus of Champier is less satisfactory as a bibliography than were the compilations of Tritheim. T h e book, however, must have been useful to scholars as a biographical source, and it has been regarded as the earliest and best history of medicine in Champier's time. Since Champier was an intellectual descendant of the Italian humanists of the fifteenth century, it is interesting to read his account of that eminent classical scholar and physician, Nicolo Leoniceno. Roughly translated it runs: 1 1 Nicolaus Leonicenus of Vicenza, physician, thoroughly trained in the Latin tongue, and ('gloriose

imbutus')

most distinguished for

CHAMPIER,

9

PHYSICIAN

his k n o w l e d g e of secular literature. H e is said to h a v e written m a n y w o r k s of w h i c h I h a v e seen only the f o l l o w i n g , v i z . : O n e book on the mistakes of physicians, a n d one on the epidemic w h i c h the Italians call F r e n c h

disease, but the F r e n c h

the N e a p o l i t a n ,

dedicated

to

Johannes F r a n c i s c u s of M i r a n d o l a . H e is still l i v i n g today at F e r r a r a and w r i t i n g various w o r k s . 1 2

Champier was made the subject of one of the great biobibliographical studies of the nineteenth century issued at Lyons in 1859 by P. A . Allut, a scholar who had a bibliographical conscience, for the bibliographical section of some three hundred pages which he appended to the main text (130 pp.) is a model of detailed analysis compiled in the best tradition of Baudrier, Brunet, and the other French scholars of the nineteenth century who did so much toward placing bibliographical research on a plane with other humanistic arts. In his time, Champier's reputation as a physician equaled his distinction as a writer, for he was a patron of the Hotel 12 "Nicolaus leonicenus vicentinus medicus latino sermoue [sic] ad perfectum instructus et disciplinis secularium litteramm gloriose imbuuw. Multa dicitur composuisse opuscula. De quibus ego solum vidi subiecta videlicet. De medicorum erroribus, lib. i . De epidimia quam itali morbum gallicum. Galli vero neapolitanum vocant ad iohannem franciscum miradulensem [sic], lib. i . Viuit usque hodie ferrarie et varia conscribit." This passage occurs on the verso of f. xxxv. The text of the De medicinx scriptoribus extends from f. i. to f. Ivii. We arc fortunate enough to have in the Historical Library at Yale two copies—my own acquired from Maggs Bros, in January 1 9 3 1 (Catalogue No. 560) and Dr. Cushing's copy which bears the signature of Ludwig Choulant [Dresden, 1 8 3 9 ] , acquired from Mr. Henry Schuman in 1 9 3 7 (Catalogue 1 , No. 1 4 ) . The Choulant copy had previously belonged to the late Edward C. Streeter. On the verso of f. ii is an interesting woodcut illustrating the beheading of St. Symphorian with Champier and his wife kneeling in prayer before the martyr. Beneath each of the kneeling figures are the family crests. The same woodcut is found in three other places in the volume but in the tracts subsequent to the De medicince scriptoribus.

10

THE BEGINNINGS

Dieu 1 3 and also one of the founders of the College of Medicine at Lyons (Christie, p. 167 1 0 ). But it is as a medical humanist that his name has come down in history. That he was among the leaders in the humanistic movement is confirmed by one of his contemporaries. Etienne Dolet in his "Commentaries on the Latin tongue" 14 when describing the efforts of his countrymen to "gain a victory over barbarism [and] restore eloquence to its ancient dignity," wrote: "From the medical schools there rush to the conflict Symphorien Champier, Jacques du Bois, Jean Ruel, Jean [Guillaume?] Cop, François Rabelais, Carolus Paludanus." The important rôle these colorful figures played in popularizing the vernacular and spreading throughout France the light and culture of the Renaissance was first brought to my attention in 1925-26 at a series of memorable evening seminars which the late Edward C. Streeter held at his house on Beacon Street in Boston. He had devoted a great part of his life to the study of the Lyons group because he felt that they not only made a great contribution to the progress of medicine and medical literature, but to learning in the broadest sense. It will ever be a source of profound regret that Dr. Streeter never set down some of the wealth of information he had gathered, for, standing in front of a grand piano on which he had laid out the works of these men, he could make them and their stirring lives come vividly before us. And if I succeed in transmitting something of the knowledge and atmosphere which Dr. Streeter conveyed so freely 1 3 OSLER, SIR University Press, J * DOLF.T, I.. Gryphius, 1536.

WILLIAM. The evolution of modern medicine. New Haven, Yale 1 9 2 1 . 243 pp. Commentant linguae Lalinae. Tomus primus. Lyons, Sebastien 854 pp. text, in double columns, numbered 1-1708.

CANAPPE, RABELAIS, A N D DOLET

11

to the intimate circle of his friends and students, I shall feel that I have contributed in a small way toward carrying forward the humanisitic tradition so brilliantly espoused by the men of Lyons. Among the medical group were two who merit brief mention here although they were not bibliographers—Jean Canappe and François Rabelais, the greatest humanist of them all. Canappe's contributions took the form of translations of certain of the works of Galen, 15 the first of which was printed by Etienne Dolet in 1541, and a vernacular rendering of the Prologue, & chapitre singulier16 (Fig. 5) of Guy de Chauliac. This he followed by a complete pocketsize 'Guide' which bore the significant title Le Guidon pour les barbiers et chirurgiens.17 This, like Champier's rendering, proved to be a very popular book which passed through many editions, all of which are excessively rare because the barbers literally thumbed them out of existence. The Latin editions of Guy de Chauliac, many of which were issued at Paris during the sixteenth century, are, on the other hand, relatively common, and individual copies show little sign of use. Rabelais' first work was an erudite translation of Galen's Ars medica and the Aphorisms of Hippocrates (Fig. 6), which was issued by Gryphius in 1532. 18 After registering 15

AUDRY, J. "Jehan Canape." Lyon médical, 1926, 138, 490-96. GUY DE CHAULIAC. Prologue, & chapitre singulier, tr. J. Canape. Lyons, E. Dolet, 1542. 127, [ 1 ] pp. (Fig. 5). 17 GUY DE CHAULIAC. Le Guidon pour les barbiers et chirurgiens [tr. J. Canape], Lyons, P. Rigaud, 1609. [ 3 ] , 4-567 numbered leaves. 18 RABELAIS, F. Hippocratis ac Galeni libri aliquot, ex recognitione Francisci Rabelaesi, medici omnibus numeris absolutissimi. Lyons, Sebastien Gryphius, 1532 (see Fig. 6). This was issued as an attractive i6mo of 428 pages. Appended to the Latin text is the Greek text of the Aphorisms in 40 unnumbered pages. In 16

12

THE BEGINNINGS

for his M.D. at Montpellier, he had lectured on the Aphorisms before crowded audiences—the first, one biographer records, to lecture directly from the Greek text. His knowledge of Greek made him valuable to Gryphius, who employed him as a proofreader shortly after he came to Lyons in 1532. In the same year Gryphius also published a book edited by Rabelais—the Latin letters on medical subjects of the Ferrara doctor, Giovanni Manardi, whose work, first issued in 1521, Rabelais greatly admired. Rabelais contributed a preface in French to these Epistolae medicinales,19 During the same year (1532) he brought out at the November book fair the first book of Pantagruel (Fig. 7), which was followed two years later by Gargantua. These, and the third and fourth books of Pantagruel which followed (Fig. 8), admitted Rabelais to the company of Aristophanes, Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Dante, for they embodied the whole vital and living spirit of the Renaissance —indeed of any age where there are hatred of bigotry and superstition, thirst for learning, and a surging desire for the freedom of the individual and new horizons for the human spirit. Rabelais was concerned with more than curing the bodily ills of his patients—he was interested in their intellectual and spiritual health as well. In his great masterpieces Dr. Cushing's copy, which he obtained from Maggs Bros, in 1922, he had inserted his own translation of the last aphorism, which ran as follows: "What medicine will not cure, the knife will. What the knife will not cure, the cautery will cure. What the cautery will not cure, that one must consider incurable." Dr. Cushing added in parenthesis: "He did not know radium." The Rabelais Hippocrates is a very rare book, both in its first edition of 1 5 3 2 and in the later edition of 1545 also issued by Gryphius. In the latter edition the Greek text of the Aphorisms carries a separate title-page dated 1543. 19 lo Manardi Ferrariensis media Epistolarum medicinalium liber xx [with preface in French by Rabelais], Lyons, Sebastien Gryphius, 1532. 489 pp., [ 1 6 ] 11.

ELUDING THE INQUISITION

13

man himself became his patient and he dealt with the fundamental and universal concerns of mankind in any age. In recounting the rollicking and droll adventures of his heroic characters he managed to express himself on all of the vital issues of his time. Many of his contemporaries, and many readers since, were so taken with the form of his stories that they missed the substance behind them. N o t so the Theological Faculty of the Sorbonne—the references to the Sorbonists in the anonymous early editions were not veiled, and Rabelais (for he was soon identified as the author), like all who in those times had the courage to ridicule existing abuses, lived in constant danger of the stake. Powerful and influential sponsors, journeys to Italy at strategic times, and revisions of the text in subsequent editions of his books saved him from the tragic fate which befell his outspoken and more foolhardy contemporaries, Michael Servetus and Etienne Dolet. H e lived until 1553, bringing out a complete edition of his Book I V , which reflected the interest of the age in geographical discoveries and colonial and maritime expansion, in the year before he died (a partial edition was issued in 1548). In the words of the late Samuel Putnam: 2 0 "If Rabelais has given us the fullest and most vital expression of his age that is to be found in literature, it is for the reason that he was not merely the man of his age but the man of tomorrow as well." A l o n g with his literary activities Rabelais continued active practice as a physician. W h e n he settled at Lyons in 1532, he received an appointment as chief physician to the Hôtel 2 0 PUTNAM, S. All the extant works of François Rabelais. N e w York, Covici Friede, 1929. 3 vols.

14

THE BEGINNINGS

Dieu, known as the Grand Hostel de Notre Dame de Pitié du Point-du-Rhône (Fig. 9), which was said to have been founded by Childebert in the sixth century.21 Here he served with distinction for two years, after which he made a trip to Rome with his patron, Jean du Bellay. He returned a few months later to see Gargantua through the press and made a second trip to Rome the following year, as things had become a little too warm for him at Lyons. By 1536 we find him again at Lyons, where he now settled down for ten years in an active medical practice. Since his hospital appointment had lapsed, his only source of income, Plattard points out, must have been derived from his practice, for authors in those days received but a mere pittance in the way of royalties from their publishers. The most adequate accounts of Rabelais as a physician are those of Plattard,22 W. F. Smith,23 Anatole France,24 and Powys. 25 Le Double26 has written an illuminating volume on Rabelais as an anatomist, and Heulard27 has described his activities as a surgeon. Perhaps the most significant point concerning Rabelais' contribution to scientific medicine lies in the fact that he insisted upon dis21

GUIGUE, M. C. Recherches sur Notre-Dame de Lyon. Lyons, N. Scheuring. 1876. 202 pp. 22 PLATTARD, J. The life of François Rabelais. London, George Routledge h Sons, Ltd., 1930. xi, 308 pp. 23 SMITH, W. F. Rabelais. The five book} and minor writings together with letters and documents illustrating his life. London, Alexander P. Watt, 1893. 2 vols. 24 FRANCE, ANATOLE. "Rabelais. A biography in three installments," tr. by Ernest Boyd. The Forum, 1928, 53, 481-88, 622-29; 773-82; 940-48. 25 POWYS, J. C. Rabelais. London, The Bodley Head, 1948. 424 pp. 28 LE DOUBLE, A.-F. Rabelais. Anatomiste et physiologiste. Paris, Ernest Leroux, 1899. xiv, 440 pp. 27 HEULARD, A., DE NIVERNOYS. Rabelais chirurgien. Paris, A. Lemerre, 1885. 84 pp. See also: BRÉMOND, F. Rabelais médecin. Paris, Maloinc, 1 9 1 1 . 227 pp., ill.; and MOLLET, M. Rabelais clinicien. Paris, Henri Jouve, 1904. 59 pp.

BRUNFELS' HERB ARUM

15

secting the human body and he urged his students to go and do likewise—this as early as 1532, eleven years before the advent of the Vesalian Fabrica and six years before Vesalius and Calcar had issued their celebrated Tabulae sex. OTTO BRUNFELS

While Champier and his circle at Lyons were diligent in the cause of humanism, a Carthusian novice from Mainz who had become a convert to Luther was studying medicine at the University of Basel. This man was Otto Brunfels (Fig. 10). 28 In 1530, the year that he took his degree (Fig. 11), 2 9 he published his great Herbarum vivae eicones.30 It would appear that bibliography and botany often went hand in hand, for many bibliographers also achieved distinction in botany. Perhaps there is something in the impulse to classify living things that causes man to attempt classification of the written word. Brunfels had the wit to employ a talented artist, Hans Weiditz, in his day the best engraver in wood to be found in Strasbourg where Brunfels was living at the time. Weiditz was responsible for the beautifully executed illustrations, which, as Agnes Arber 31 points out, represent a real return to nature. The conventionalized and inaccurate figures which characterized the earlier herbals and were generally copied one from the other were in the 2 8 A R B E R , A G N E S . Herbals. Their origin and evolution. A chapter in the history of botany, ¡470-1670. Cambridge, University Press, 1938. xxiv, 326 pp. 2 9 B R U N F E L S , O. [Printed outline in Latin of thesis publicly defended in 1530 for his M.D. degree at the University of Basel.] Broadside measuring 180 by 290 mm.; 61 lines. Text begins with woodcut initial M (see Fig. 1 1 ) . Obtained by Dr. Cushing in August 1939 from Dr. E. P. Goldschmidt of London. 3 ® B R U N F E L S , O. Herbarum vivae eicones. Strasbourg, J. Schott, 1530. 4 11., 266 PP-, 33 ¡I31 See note 28.

16

THE BEGINNINGS

Brunfels-Weiditz herbal replaced by figures possessing both freshness and a high degree of perfection. Although the figures were better than the text, Brunfels, on the basis of this book, has been called one of the fathers of German botany. But to describe his contributions to this field would take us away from our central theme. In 1530, the same year in which he issued his herbal, he also published a catalogue of illustrious physicians (Fig. 12), 32 a modest work of seventy-eight pages similar in scope and execution to Champier's De medicince claris scriptoribus. Although not of great bibliographical interest, Brunfels' catalogue contains brief thumbnail sketches of some three hundred eminent physicians listed in chronological sequence. The text is preceded by a useful alphabetical index of names, and at the end of the book there is a rather clumsy classification of the medical men enumerated in the text based on the specialty toward which the author leaned, i.e., three are listed as being primarily anatomists—Mundinus, Alexander Benedictus, and Carpus (Berengario da Carpi). This is of some interest as being one of the earliest references to specialization in the broad field of medicine. Although much of the work was bibliographically spotty and inconsistent, when Brunfels came to Galen, he devoted several pages to his life and followed these with a five-page catalogue of Galen's various writings. Brunfels died in 1534 just as he had begun to make his contributions to medicine and science. By this time a young man of Zurich was already launched, at the age of eighteen, 32 BRUNFELS, O. Catalogus illustrium medicorum, sive de primis medicina scriptoribus. Strasbourg, J. Schott, 1530. [4] //., 77 pp. (see Fig. 1 2 ) . My copy of the "Catalogus" was presented to me in 1935 by Dr. Erik Waller of Sweden.

FATHER OF BIBLIOGRAPHY

17

upon a career which was completely to overshadow that of Brunfels, both in botany and in bibliography. This was Conrad Gesner (Fig. 13), who was to build up a reputation in both spheres that remained unchallenged for two hundred years. CONRAD G E S N E R 3 3

When the late Sir William Osier came to compile the catalogue of his remarkable library,34 he divided his holdings into special categories; in the first, his so-called Bibliotheca prima, he placed all those who, in his opinion, had made enduring contributions to medical science. Of Gesner he once remarked: "I am not sure that this fellow should go into 'Prima'; but I love him so much that I must put him there. Besides, he is the father of bibliography." Like his country33 There are two contemporary sources upon which all subsequent accounts of Conrad Gesner are based. The first is his own youthful autobiographical entry in the first edition of Bibliotheca universalis written in 1544 in his twenty-eighth year. In this Gesner gives a list of the books he had published up to that time, and he also gives some indication of books that he is planning (f. 179 verso to 183 recto). The other contemporary source is the rare Josias Simler biography, published at Zurich in 1566, the year after Gcsncr's death entitled Vita clarissimi philosophi et medici excellentissimi Conradi Gesneri Tigurini, conscripta a losia Simlero Tigurino. Zurich, Froschouer, 1566. This contains many intimate details concerning Gesner's day-to-day life, and it is of considerable interest also as containing seven examples of the beautiful woodcuts which Gesner had planned to use in the great history of plants that he did not live to complete. In addition it includes Gesner's long catalogue of his own works (21 verso to 51 recto). Of the more modern sources, Cuvier's sympathetic account in the Biographic universellc (Paris, L. G. Michaud, 1816, vol. 17, pp. 242-47) and Henry Morley's warm and discerning appreciation of Gesner in his Clement Marot and other studies (London, Chapman and Hall, 1 8 7 1 , 2 vols in 1 ; Gesner, vol. 2, PP- 9 7 - J 3 i ) can be enthusiastically recommended. The first to deal adequately with Gesner from a bibliographical standpoint was J. Christian Bay in a valuable paper prepared in 1 9 1 6 in connection with the four hundredth anniversary celebrations of Gesner's birth, held in Chicago. This paper is cited in footnote 35. 34 OSLER, SIR WILLIAM. Bibliotheca Osleriana. (Ed. by W. W. Francis, R. H. Hill, and Archibald Malloch.) Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1929. xxxv, 785 pp.

18

THE BEGINNINGS

man, Albrecht von Haller (who was to flourish two centuries later), Conrad Gesner was a precocious youth who entered the sphere of higher learning at an unbelievably early age. But unlike Haller, the soft-spoken Gesner possessed a warmth and friendliness that attracted his contemporaries to him so that when he died prematurely in 1565 at the age of forty-nine, he was probably die most beloved of all figures in European literary circles. Born at Zurich in the year 1 5 1 6 of humble parentage, Gesner was early placed in the home of his great-uncle, Hans Frick, for his father, a furrier with many children, could not give him many advantages. Gesner received his primary education in a local school, where he learned the rudiments of Greek and Latin. His uncle inspired in him a deep interest in botany and, on the plant-gathering expeditions from which they both derived much pleasure, Frick schooled him in accurate observation. But although he gave him a good start, Hans Frick was unable to send his nephew to more advanced schools. Fortunately for posterity, however, John Jacob Amman, who taught Latin and oratory in the school which Gesner attended, recognized that the boy had unusual qualities of mind and heart and, believing that he would one day bring fame to Zurich and his country, Amman took him into his house and instructed him gratuitously for a period of three years. About this time civil war broke out between the Catholics and the Swiss Protestants, who were led by the humanist and democrat, Ulrich Zwingli. This Protestant Reformation, the counterpart of the movement led by Luther in Germany, began in Zurich. Conrad Gesner had applied to the great

GESNER'S EARLY YEARS

19

humanist for assistance in continuing his studies, but Zwingli was killed on the bloodstained battlefield of Kappel in October of 1531, and among the loyal followers who died with him was Gesner's father. This left the family further impoverished, and Gesner, not wishing to be a burden to his mother, now left the town of his birth and attached himself to the household of the scholarly Wolfgang Fabricius Capito of Strasbourg, who, like Amman, was immediately impressed with the boy's talents. After nearly a year with Capito, during which he added Hebrew to his knowledge of languages, Gesner, now sixteen years of age, returned to Zurich. He was soon sent on an educational mission to France by the Scholastic Senate of the city which paid him a stipend—an opportunity which doubtless came to him through the continued interest of Amman. He spent his first year teaching at Bruges, and then the attraction of the University of Paris took him thither. But he was disappointed to find the professors hidebound and conservative; indeed, his reactions to the faculty at the Sorbonne were closely similar to the opinions held among the liberal scholars of Lyons. One cannot but wonder what might have been the result had Gesner chosen Lyons rather than Paris as a center for postgraduate study. During these years he was incessantly reading Greek and Latin scientific texts and was equally familiar with the classical poets, orators, historians, and philologists. Along with this scholarly activity he pursued his botanical studies wherever he went and he came to know intimately the local flora of many districts of France and Switzerland. On returning once again to his native haunts, Gesner mar-

20

THE BEGINNINGS

ried a young and beautiful girl, poor even as he was. H e optimistically thought that marriage would cause no interruption in his studies; indeed, he believed he would find it an incentive to intellectual development, for, as he said, "If she has a bad temper, I shall learn to exercise patience, and in this respect to earn the reputation of Socrates; but if she is good, I have deserved no blame." The happy future which he envisaged did not, unfortunately, materialize, for his wife was often ill and proved a considerable drain on his slender resources. After teaching in Zurich for a brief interval, Gesner settled down in Lausanne for three years as a professor of Greek in an academic school which had been newly established. It was at this time that he began to write. His thoughts also began to turn toward medicine and in some manner he found time to commence the preliminary work. H e soon came to the conclusion, however, that the best way to learn medicine was to attach himself to a distinguished physician and to gain his knowledge through observation and close association with such a man in practice. H e therefore resigned his professorship and proceeded to Montpellier. T o his disappointment, none of the eminent physicians there could receive him as a house pupil, but since it was also a center for natural history, his botanical studies received a strong stimulus under the influence of those great teachers, Joubert and Rondelet. His medical studies were finally completed at Basel, where he received his doctorate of medicine in 1541. The remainder of his life was spent in the chair of philosophy at the University of Zurich, in practising medi-

A UNIVERSAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

21

cine, and in writing. The modest house in which he lived is still standing (Fig. 33). As Gesner had pored over the literature of learning, and particularly of medicine and science, he had been struck by the fact that there were no classified lists of the more important publications on any given subject. Accordingly, while still in his early twenties, he had set out to compile a universal bibliography or dictionary which would list in alphabetical sequence the writings of all authors, famous and obscure, ancient and modern; with each entry he gave a brief résumé of the text, usually drawn from prefaces of the books themselves. Since Gesner was a contemporary of the great Belgian anatomist, Andreas Vesalius (having been born some thirteen months after the Belgian), it is interesting that his monumental bibliography was published in the year 1545, about two years after the Vesalian Fabrica, when the young compiler was only twenty-nine years of age. Among the contemporary writers included in the Bibliotheca universalis (Fig. 14), one also finds Michael Servetus and his De Trinitatis erroribus, 1531, although Gesner erroneously lists it as having been published at Basel. Unaware that Michael Servetus and Michael Villanovanus were one and the same person, he listed the Villanovanus piece on Syrups (Paris, 1537) separately from the De erroribus. He was thoroughly up to date in recording the writings of Vesalius, for he included not only his 1537 "Paraphrase of the ninth book of Rhazes" and his "Epistola docens," but the table of contents of the Fabrica.

22

T H E BEGINNINGS

The Bibliotheca universalis is important not only as one of the earliest systematic ventures in the field of bibliography, but also because it collected for the first time, and preserved for posterity, a faithful record of the literary activities of the first century of printing and publishing. . . . The critical notes preserve even to this day the charm of a kindly spirit and an anxiety to do full justice to the writer's efforts. . . . The work reveals a broad, benevolent view, a happy union of Germanic sense of completeness and Gallic breadth of view. . . . His annotations deserve the most serious study, and on the whole the bibliographer of the present day may well reserve a note in his memory for the Bibliotheca—remembering that in library science, as in other fields of human effort, there is a thread which connects all members of a noble lineage; and whoever follows this thread will be less tempted than others to undertake work with books in the spirit that no effort of real value has been made before the advent of the present generation. 35

The Bibliotheca had been arranged alphabetically, and Gesner felt the need for subject classification. Accordingly, in 1548 he brought out a companion volume with nineteen general subject headings under the title Pandectarum sive partitionum universalium, libri xxi. Actually, there were only nineteen books, as liber xx, the medical section, most unfortunately was never published, and liber xxi, the Partitiones theologicae, was issued separately in 1549. Continuing with this important bibliographical endeavor, Gesner in 1555 published first an appendix to his Bibliotheca36 and in the same year an "Epitome" in which the individual entries 3 5 BAY, J. C. "Conrad Gesner ( 1 5 1 6 - 1 5 6 5 ) the father of bibliography. An appreciation." Papers Bibliogr. Soc. America, 1 9 1 6 , 10, 53-86. 38 The various editions and supplements of Gesner's great Bibliotheca are described in Appendix I.

HISTORIA ANIMALIUM

23

were abbreviated, but in which newer publications, issued after the original edition of 1545, were included. The Gesner bibliographies had a great vogue and were widely known in all the European libraries of his time. They represented something new in the way of scholarly tools and they were obviously a great advance over the cryptic lists of Tridieim and Champier. With Gesner the science of bibliographical description, as we now understand the term, was born—not only for medicine and science, but for the entire learned world. Gesner's contribution might have rested with his bibliographical compilations alone, but this was not to be, for to him bibliography was a mere tool to his larger aspirations. These included a comprehensive Greek lexicon, also published in 1545 (and again in 1552), another huge volume on botany, and still another on herbs (1555). And as if this were not enough, he issued, also in 1555, a volume of readings of the great surgical texts which included the works of his immediate contemporaries, such as Jean Tagault and Alfonso Ferri; and in addition, at the end of the book, passages from Galen and Oribasius. From Gesner's prolific pen there were many lesser works, e.g., on fossils and folk remedies (several of which were translated contemporaneously into English), but scientifically his most important single work was his Historia animalium, issued in five volumes between 1551 and 1587, in which the animal kingdom, including insects, birds, fish, and the various four-footed mammals, was described in detail and depicted in excellent illustrations. In this work Gesner made an attempt to classify living things, and while the classifica-

THE

24

BEGINNINGS

tion he adopted was not widely followed, he stands in the history of zoology as the most important single forerunner of Linnaeus. To this brief account of the father of modern bibliography might be added a personal note which I take from the revealing essay of Henry Morley. 37 C o n r a d Gesner, w h o kept open house . . . f o r all learned m e n w h o came into his neighbourhood . . . w a s not only the best naturalist a m o n g the scholars of his day, but of all m e n of that century he w a s the pattern m a n of letters. H e w a s faultless in private life, assiduous in study, diligent in m a i n t a i n i n g correspondence a n d g o o d w i l l w i t h learned men in all countries, h o s p i t a b l e — t h o u g h

his m e a n s

were

small—to every scholar that c a m e into Z u r i c h . P r o m p t to serve all, he was an editor of other men's volumes, a w r i t e r of prefaces f o r f r i e n d s , a suggester to y o u n g writers of books on w h i c h they m i g h t e n g a g e themselves, and a great helper to them in the progress of their w o r k . B u t still, w h i l e finding time f o r services to other m e n , he c o u l d produce as much out of his o w n study as t h o u g h he had n o part in the life beyond its walls.

Gesner fell ill in 1552 and six years later, while still in poor health, he wrote rather wearily to a friend saying that for twenty years he had never been free of exhausting night work, that he yearned for a freer life in which to develop his teaching activities and his medical practice—but the demand for his books continued. He established a museum in his house where he could keep his specimens and drawings of plants, for it was his plan to publish an herbal which would be on the same large scale as his Historia animalium. By the time he died he had collected 1,500 drawings, and some had 3 7 M O R I . I Y , H V N R Y . The life of Girolamo Cardan, of Milan, physician. London, Chapman and Hall, 1854. i 2 " PP- ( pp. 152-53 ].

HISTORIA ANIMALIUM

25

already been made into woodcuts. But before he could finish it, he succumbed to a severe pleurisy, then epidemic in Zurich; he died on the 13th of December, 1565, at the age of forty-nine, leaving behind him a record of sustained productivity almost without parallel in the annals of the literature of learning. ADDENDUM

While the text of these lectures was passing through the press, the Historical Library acquired from Dr. E. Weil of London a remarkably interesting and little-known medical biobibliography39 published in 1556 by Wolfgang Jobst (Justus) of Frankfort on Oder. I had not previously heard of the book and have never seen it quoted. The materials are arranged in chronological order and nearly a thousand names are included, among them those of many obscure mediaeval physicians and also contemporaries living in the eastern parts of Germany, Polonia, and the Baltic states. Vesalius is given detailed attention, as are other of the more prominent figures of the early sixteenth century. Since the book appeared almost at the same time as Gesner's Bibliotheca universalis, Jobst's Chronologia should be considered in connection with Gesner's bibliographies. 3 9 J O B S T ( J U S T U S ) , W O L F G A N G . Chronologia live temporum supputatio, omnium illustrium medicorttm, tam veterum, qiiam recentiorum, in omrti lingttartim cognitione, a primis artis medicae inventoribus & scriptoribus, usq, ad nostram aetatem if seculum. Frankfort on Oder, Johann Eichorn, 1556. [ 1 0 ] , 174 [24, index] pp.

C H A P T E R II THE SEVENTEENTH AND

EIGHTEENTH

CENTURIES: M E D I C A L BOOK SALES, a B E U G H E M , VAN DER LINDEN, H A L L E R , A N D T H E RISE OF MEDICAL

BIOBIBLIOGRAPHY

ALTHOUGH A NUMBER of notable medical libraries brought together by private collectors in the late

were

fifteenth

and early sixteenth centuries, e.g., those of Ulrich Ellenbog 1 and Nicolaus Pol" (and there were also many others in Italy, France, and Germany), published catalogues of such libraries were not at that time in vogue. W h e n these collections were disposed of, it was generally by personal negotiation with ] ULRICH ELLENBOG (:iiinis mrrodticriuus eft 111 pjacrtca ¿Salali. i5cc«iidii8cgrtrudtì)uamìnoju cniarimm. £ti.igclicccb:ifhaiiicp tchgionie eje fen p n 0 geni in ? pec* flirti 7 pbilofopbos validiiTtiins argumcris cópiobario Ciufdc oiii iÒ£uipbou'am ¡Bplpojifmi fine collccrionco medicinale». Slejradribfidicri vcroncffo Spbo:ifiiit fine collccnoncs

Slcndriapb!odifa