Charles Estienne, De dissectione partium corporis humani libri tres, Paris: S. Colinaeus, 1545, p. 134, woodcut, leaf height 35 cm, K.7.28

Charles Estienne (1505-1564) had completed this illustrated book by 1539, but its printing was delayed until 1545, because of a legal dispute with Estienne de la Riviére (d. 1569), a surgeon who had assisted in the dissections and the production of the images. Estienne’s book drew on newly published works by Galen, but he also extolled the usefulness of his book for surgeons.

Estienne showed two images of veins and arteries, one from the front and another from the back. This woodcut, from the front, shows both veins and arteries, on the surface of the body as well as inside the body, linked to the major organs. The figure points to a frame on a classical wall which explains the different lettering: the upper-case letters indicate the main course and branches of the veins; the lower-case letters show those of the arteries; and the ‘arithmetic numbers’ describe the approved points of venesection. The text following the woodcut names and explains each of the marked veins and arteries. Number 10, a point on the basilic vein, for example, is described as a ‘very dangerous’ point to cut into, because it is close to an artery and some other veins.

Compared to the traditional ‘blood-letting man’ in which only the points from which blood could be let were shown, this image showing the course of the blood vessels explains why those points could be used. For the edification of surgeons who carried out blood-letting, a figure that combined both arteries and veins, with an indication of safe points of incision, must have been more useful than, say, Vesalius’s figure of veins alone in a three-dimensional figure.