One of the earliest detailed and realistic descriptions of the New World. Acosta hypothesized that the indigenous peoples of Latin America had migrated from Asia. He also divided the native peoples into three barbarian categories, described Inca and Aztec customs and history, as well as other information such as winds and tides, lakes, rivers, plants, animals, and mineral resources in the New World. Lib. 3, chap. 9 contains his description of mountain sickness, “Acosta’s disease”, which he experienced during his crossing of the Peruvian Andes. This was the first description of altitude sickness. Digital facsimile of 1590 edition from Google Books at this link.

Translated into English as The naturall and morall historie of the East and West Indies Intreating of the remarkable things of heaven, of the elements, mettalls, plants and beasts which are proper to that country: together with the manners, ceremonies, lawes, governments, and warres of the Indians. Written in Spanish by the R.F. Ioseph Acosta, and translated into English by E.G. (London, 1604). Full text of the 1604 translation from Early English Books Online at this link.

The De oculorum et aurium represents the first “clinical” manual on diseases of the ear. Mercuriali was primarily concerned with treatment.

The first systematic medical bibliography. Includes an annotated list of 1,224 authors writing in Latin, lists of French, German, and Italian writers, and other material. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Translated into English by Richard Browne as The cure of old age and preservation of youth by Roger Bacon, a Franciscan frier (London, 1683). Digital facsimile of the 1683 edition from the Internet Archive at this link.

The first significant work on the history of Egyptian medicine, and one of the first European studies of non-European medicine. Alpini became professor of botany at Padua after having spent three years in Egypt. French translation by R. de Fenoyl, 2 vols, Cairo, Inst. Française d’Archéologie Orientate, 1979.

The first medical subject bibliography, arranged under very broad subject headings with indexes of authors and subjects. Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

Includes plant and mineral remedies of New Spain as well as natural history details. See DEUCHLER, W. Juan de Cárdenas. Eim Beitrag zur Geschichte der spanischem Naturbetrachtung und Medizin im Mexiko während des 16. Jahrhunderts. (Bern, P. Haupt, 1930). Digital facsimile of the 1913 edition from the Internet Archive at this link.

First catalogue of the Orto botanico di Padova, the oldest academic botanical garden that remains in its original location., Digital facsimile from fc.cab.unipd.it at this link.

Includes historical data. Bauhin was professor of anatomy at Basle.

A greatly expanded second edition. The results of tying a vein and the centripetal flow in veins were first recorded in print by Cesalpino (lib. ii, Qu. xvii, p. 234). See the English translation, with commentary, of the portions of this work relevant to the circulation by Clark, Nimis and Rochefort in J. hist. med. & all. sci., 1978, 33, 185-213.

Fabricius, the “Father of German Surgery”, was the first to advocate the amputation above the gangrenous or injured part. He is accredited with the first amputation of the thigh. In his work he makes no reference to Paré’s methods; he believed in the efficacy of the “weapon-salve”. See also No. 5570.

Title transliterated. Text and title page (except imprint) are in Arabic. This is the first printing of the text in Arabic of Book V of al-Qānūn. See also S. M. Afnan, Avicenna, his life and works. London, 1958.

Guillemeau was Paré’s son-in-law. His splendidly illustrated work is of special importance for dentistry and for surgery for cleft lip. It describes pyorrhea alveolaris for the first time and is also the first work to refer to inorganic materials for tooth fillings and for the construction of artificial teeth. English translation, Dordrecht, 1597.

This innovative didactic work divided the study of anatomy into 91 tables, set in type, but without images. It was unusually popular, with eleven editions in the seventeenth century as well as translations into Latin and Dutch. Cabrol taught anatomy at the University of Montpellier, and became the first surgeon of Henry IV, who awarded him the title of royal demonstrator of anatomy. Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

The first treatise on feigned diseases.

The French humanist physician Foës produced the first Greek & Latin edition of the complete extant works of Hippocrates. His edition was the most significant before that of Littré.

Harington invented a water-closet in which the disposal of excreta was for the first time controlled by mechanical means. He published several tracts on the device, the first appearing in 1596. These were elegantly reprinted by the Chiswick Press in an edition limited to 100 copies (1814). “Ajax” is a pun on “a jakes”, an Elizabethan name for a privy. Critical, annotated edition by E. S. Donno, New York, Columbia Univ. Press, 1962.

The first systematic work on the whole subject of surgery written in England. Lowe was the founder of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. This was the first medical organization in Great Britain to include physicians and surgeons together. Lowe trained in Paris but settled in Glasgow after practicing on the Continent and in London.

First Italian book on obstetrics. It is a work of importance for the study of the history of Caesarean section; in it Mercurio advocated the Caesarean operation in cases of contracted pelvis.

Books I-II of De arte venandi cum avibus, edited by Marcus Welser from a very old, incomplete defective manuscript, which lacked Books III-IV. More than a dissertation on hunting, this work is considered the first zoological treatise written in the critical spirt of modern science, centuries before the scientific revolution. Besides the most detailed exposition of the method of hunting with falcons, the work concerns the anatomy of birds, a description of avian habits, and the excursion of migratory birds. Written during the 1240s by Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, who was also an accomplished linguist and scholar, the original manuscript was lost in 1248 at the siege of Parma.

Manuscripts of De arte venandi cum avibus exist in a two-book version at Rome, Vienna, Paris (2x), Geneva and Stuttgart, and in a six-book version at Bologna, Paris, Nantes, Valencia, Rennes, and Oxford. The most famous is an illuminated manuscript commissioned by Manfred, son of Frederick II: a two-column parchment codex of 111 folios ( Vatican, MS. Pal. Lat. 1071). This manuscript of the two book version and is illustrated with brilliantly colored, extraordinarily lifelike, accurate and minute images of birds, their attendants, and the instruments of the art. The manuscript also contains additions made by Manfred, which are all clearly marked in the beginning by notations such as "Rex", "Rex Manfredus" or "addidit Rex".

Facsimile edition of the manuscript: Graz, Austria: Akademische Druck-u. Verlagsanstalt, 1969.  Digital facsimile of the 1596 edition from Google Books at this link. 

A comprensive study of the production, storage, characteristics, and use of wines. Book two considers wine in relation to health. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

This was the catalogue of John Gerarde's garden at Holborn, where he introduced exotic trees, fruits, and plants from the New World, and also grew widely available English plants. The text was very basic, being essentially a plant list, the first list of its kind. The edition must have been relatively small since only one copy survived, in the Hans Sloane collection in the British Library. In addition to his career as a surgeon, Gerard was superintendent at the gardens of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, a position he continued in for more than 20 years. In 1586, the College of Physicians established a physic garden with Gerard as curator, a position he held till 1604.

In his garden catalogue Gerard listed over 1000 different trees, shrubs and plants that he was personally growing. In the revised second edition of 1599 he added English names for the plants.

In 1595 Pineau demonstrated the vestigial foramen ovale in the adult heart, settling the question of the perviousness of the septum of the heart. His work was first published in 1597. He published this study in a frank treatise on virginity and the ways of losing it. Digital facsimile from BnF Gallica at this link.

Gerard is perhaps the best remembered of ail the English herbalists. The most important edition of his book is the second, published by T. Johnson in 1633 (reprinted in facsimile, New York, Dover, 1975). Johnson greatly enlarged the book, correcting many mistakes and bringing the number of plants included to a total of 2850. Gerard plagiarized much of his work from Dodoens (No. 1812). See B. Henrey, British botanical and horticultural literature before 1800, Vol. 1, pp. 35-54, 1975.

Codronchi's Methodus testificandi, inquibusvis casibus medicis oblatis first published in the above (pp. 148-232), is considered the earliest significant work on forensic medicine. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

First treatise devoted solely to diseases of the larynx. (See also No. 1718.)

Tagliacozzi of Bologna became famous for his work on rhinoplasty, but Paré and Fallopius both abused him and his work, and the Church (which regarded such operations as meddling with the work of God) exhumed his body and reburied it in unconsecrated ground. English translation of Book II in Read, Chirurgorum comes: or the whole practice of chirurgery, London, 1687. The definitive biography of Tagliacozzi by Martha T. Gnudi, and J. P. Webster, New York, 1950 reprints this translation and reproduces the woodcuts from Tagliacozzi’s book. It also contains a history of plastic surgery after Tagliacozzi. A pirated edition with different versions of the woodcuts was published by R. Meietti, Venice, 1597. This was reprinted, Mexico, 1974. A third edition was published in 8vo format in Frankfurt, 1598. However, after this initial flury of interest sparked by the three 16th century editions, Tagliacozzi’s work fell into relative obscurity, remaining mostly forgotten until the revival of plastic surgery by Carpue, von Graefe, Dieffenbach, and others in the early 19th century.

Spach was the editor of this collection of gynecological writings. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

An alphabetically arranged handbook of herbal remedies. The title page was misprinted 1579, but the work was actually printed in 1597. A list of the plants discussed is available from Early English Books Online at this link. Second edition, London, 1633.

This book is the earliest work in English devoted to tropical medicine. It discusses sunstroke, tabardilla (possibly typhus or yellow fever), prickly heat, dysentery, erysipelas and scurvy. Facsimile reproduction, with introduction and notes by Charles Singer, Oxford, 1915. Because the author is identified only as G. W. on the title page for a long time authorship of this work was attributed to George Whetsone, an Elizabethan poet, soldier, and traveller. More recently authorship has been assigned to George Wateson, who signed the dedication. Little is known about Wateson.

The earlier lexicon of Gorraeus formed the basis of this work, which was reprinted in several editions, the last in 1792.

In 1598 Conte Ottavio Ruini edited and had published in Bologna, with a dedication to Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, Dell'anotomia [sic], et dell'infirmita del cavallo [Book ii: Dell'infirmita del cavallo] by il marchese Carlo Ruini, a Bolognese aristocrat, senator, and high-ranking lawyer. Ruini's work was the first book devoted exclusively to the structure of an animal other than man. Following the example of Vesalius, Ruini stressed the importance of "artful instruction" about all parts of the horse's body, the diseases that afflict them, and their cures. The first part of his work gives an exhaustive treatment of equine anatomy, with especially good accounts of the sense organs; it is illustrated with sixty-four full-page woodcuts, of which the last three, showing a stripped horse in a landscape setting, were clearly inspired by the Vesalian "musclemen" plates.

The second part of the work deals with equine diseases and their cures from a traditional Hippocratic-Galenic standpoint. Some scholars, basing their arguments on Ruini's description of the horse's heart and blood vessels, believe that Ruini was active in the discovery of the greater and lesser circulatory systems. This is unlikely, but it is probable that he was one of many at that time who had a notion of the circulation of the blood.

Ruini's work appeared shortly after his death. The unusual rarity of the first edition might be partially explained by fact that a portion of the sheets of the first edition were reissued the following year by printer Gaspare Bindoni in Venice. Copies of this second issue, which is also rare, contain a cancel title and a different dedication leaf changing the dedication to César, Duke of Vendôme, natural son of Henry IV.

Cole, History of Comparative anatomy, 83-97. Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 1858.

(This annotation was written for HistoryofInformation.com and entered into HistoryofMedicine.com in April 2015.)

A plan for a state-funded public health system and poor relief program. An emblem introduces each of the ten essays, which treat hospital sanitation and kitchen gardens, care of disabled veterans, prisoners and the indigent, housing for the working poor and government subsidized textile and tapestry manufacture to employ the homeless. Digital text from cervantesvirtual.com at this link.

In this rather utopian work with emblematic illustrations Pérez presented a plan for a state funded public health system and poor relief program. His ten essays concerned hospital sanitation, kitchen gardens, care of disable veterans, prisoners and the indigen, housing for the working proof and government subsized textile and tapestry manufacture to employ the homeless. This medical emblem book contains ten large woodcut emblems and a full-page woodcut floor plan of an almshouse. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

The first catalogue of medicinal plants in the Jardin des plantes de Montpellier, founded by Richer de Belleval in 1593. This was the first medical botanical garden in France.  Reprinted in Opuscules de Pierre Richer de Belleval....Nouvelle édition  d'après les exemplaires de la Bibliothèque du Roi par M. Broussonet (Paris, 1785). Digital facsimile of the 1785 edition from the Internet Archive at this link.

Aldrovandi, first director of the botanical garden at Bologna, was a prolific writer. Some of his writings made their first appearance in print after his death. He designed them as a whole to form an enormous illustrated encyclopedia of natural history and biology.

The famous illustration of Imperato's museum or "cabinet of curiosities" published in this work was the first pictorial representation of the natural history research collection formed by Renaissance humanist". The collection embraced an herbarium, shells, birds, sea creatures, fossils, clays, minerals and metallic ores, marbles and gems. It was maintained by Imperato's son Francesco, who assisted him in writing up his observations, and who may be seen in the engraving pointing out details of the specimens to two visitors as Ferrante looks on. Digital facsimile of the 1599 from the Getty Research Institute, Internet Archive, at this link. Expanded second edition, Venice, 1672 of which a digital facsimile is available from the Internet Archive at this link.

The first work on equine anatomy published in France. Héroard wrote the work in 1579 and the manuscript was preserved in the library of Château de Chantilly, but it was not published until 1599, one year after the publication of Ruini’s Dell’anotomia, et dell’infermità del cavallo. Héroart's work contains with seven exceptional engraved plates by J de Weert.  Digital facsimile from BnF Gallica at this link.