Cutting and pasting: 'Mikrokosmographia', anatomy, and the tools of dissection

In just a slight contrast to last week's post on the art of courtship, today I am sharing some wonderful information on seventeenth-century anatomy, dissection and the necessary tools for which to perform the task. The extracts are taken from Helkiah Crooke's text, Mikrokosmographia (1615), who was the physician of James I.

Taken from the frontispiece of the 1615 edition

Mikrokosmographia certainly forms part of the increasingly large body of medical texts, with a particular focus on anatomy and dissection, that emerged during the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth- centuries. Anatomy and its study had finally becomes much less of a thorny religious or ethical issue (as it had been during the time that Leonardo Da Vinci was conducting his studies, for example), and had widely become accepted as an important component of medical study and practice. This is certainly evidenced in the following extracts, since Crooke sees it fit to even include meticulous detail about the tools needed to conduct anatomical investigation.

As ever, the text and its later editions can be found on EEBO, and I have preserved the early-modern spelling of the original text.

'Now there is amongest Physitians, a double acceptation of Anatomy; either it signifieth the action which is done with the hande; or the habite of the minde, that is, the most perfect action of the intellect. The first is called practicall Anatomy, the latter Theorical or contemplatiue: the first is gained by experience, the second by reason and discourse: the first wee attaine onely by Section and Inspection, the second by the living voice of a Teacher, or by their learned writings' (D1r).

'We may define anatomy thus: An Artificiall Section of the outward and inward partes. I call it Artificiall to distinguish it from that which is rash and at aduenture which Galen calleth Vulnerary Dissection. For oftentimes in great wounds we obserue the figure, scitua|tion, magnitude, and structure of the outward and inward parts; but that obseruation is but confused, for we cannot distinctly perceiue the branchings of the Nerues, the Serpentine and writhen Meanders of the Veynes, nor the infinite divarications of the Arteries' (D1r).

'This Section cannot artificially bee accomplished, unlesse the Ministers haue convenient Instruments, as are these; Razors of all sortes, great, small, meane, sharpe, blunt, straight, crooked, and edged on both sides; Sheares or Sizers; round and large long Probes of Brasse, Siluer, Lead; a Knife of Box or of Ivory, Pincers of all sorts; hooks, Needels bent rather then straite, Reeds, Quils, Glasse-trunkes or hollow Bugles to blowe up the parts, Threds and strings, Sawes, Bodkins, Augers, Mallets, Wimbles or Trepans, Basons and Sponges; the Figures of all which wee have heereunder delineated, together with a Table whereon to lay the dead, or binde the living Anatomy, with the rings, chains, cords, & perforations fit for that purpose' (D1r).

References:
Helkiah Crooke, Mikrokosmographia: a Description of the Body of Man (London: William Iaggard, 1615), in EEBO.

© Jenna Townend 2013