ARCEUS, Franciscus and ARDERNE, John of, trans. READ, John

£32,500 · Offered by Sokol Books

An enterprising work. The first edition in English of the sixteenth-century Spanish physician Arceus and the medieval English surgeon John of Ardern, translated by the poetically inclined Tudor surgeon John Read, with treatises on head wounds, urethral caruncles, anal fistulas, and emplaisters. The first work is on the surgical treatment of head wounds, including of wounds in children and infants, trepanning, and sewing up facial wounds without scarring; wounds and diseases affecting the breast, including breast cancer in women; wounds to the belly and lungs; fistulas; simple and compound wounds; ulcers, etc. Read also provides a translation of the notes by Alvaro Nuñez. Included are numerous recipes for herbal remedies, with an exhortation to surgeons to study herbal simples and medicines, and anecdotal accounts of surgery performed on sword and dagger injuries. The woodcut of a boot and wooden frame at the start illustrates Arceus’s description of healing the feet of children born lame. John of Arderne is the first documented English surgeon. His work, dated 1349, is on anal fistulas, which are tunnels between the anus and the skin caused by ulcers. It is prefaced by his account of curing various nobles and worthies, as well as fishmongers and friars, with graphic descriptions of their conditions. There follow descriptions of the surgical instruments used in closing fistulas, and sections on why cancers in the anus are incurable, fistulas of the fingers, and swellings of th

• Binding: Hardcover

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