"THE FIRST ENGLISH ANATOMY PUBLISHED IN THE VERNACULAR"

VICARY, Thomas. The English-Mans Treasure. With the true Anatomie of Mans Body… Whereunto are annexed many Secrets appertaining to Chyrurgerie, with divers excellent approved Remedies for all Captaines and Souldiers, that travell either by Water or Land… Also the Rare Treasure of the English Bathes… Gathered and set forth for the benefit and Cure of the Poorer sort of people, who are not able to goe to the Physitians. London: B. Alsop and Tho. Fawcet, 1641. Small octavo, period style three quarter calf-gilt, green morocco spine label, marbled boards. $4500.

1641 ninth edition of "the first English anatomy published in the vernacular" (Norman 2149), with two wood engraved plates of a skeleton and the vascular system.

Vicary's career as a physician advanced when he found favor with Henry VIII after treating the monarch's sore leg; a noted anatomy teacher, Vicary was given the right to obtain four bodies of executed criminals yearly, which he used for instruction at the hall of the Worshipful Company of Barbers, to which all surgeons at the time belonged. "Vicary's antomical treatise was first published in an edition of 1548 that no longer exists. It appears to be based largely on a medieval English compilation dating from 1392, now Wellcome MS.564. This anonymous text was itself an abridged version of passages in Henri de Mondeville and Lanfranco of Milan" (Krivatsky 12390). Krivatsky 12392. See Norman 2149 for an edition from 1888.

Scattered soiling and dampstaining to text, margins of frontispiece expertly restored, not affecting image.