Hippocrates, Opera, Venice: Industria ac sumptibus Juntarum, 1588, frontispiece, engraving by Giacomo Franco (1550-1620, signed bottom right: ‘Jacobus Francus fec.’), plate size 31.3 x 20.8 cm, K.2.10.
This volume contains Hippocratic works in Greek and in Latin, edited by Girolamo Mercuriale (1530-1606), professor of medicine at Padua and then at Bologna, who then entered the service of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. He is well-known for his work on ancient gymnastics, De arte gymnastica. The Hippocratic corpus includes sundry disparate works written by different people mostly between the end of the fifth century and the middle of the fourth century BC, and contains works on regimen (including exercise and dietetics), surgery (e.g. on injuries to the head), gynecology, and natural (herbal) remedies. None of these can be securely attributed to the historical Hippocrates (second half of fifth century BC).
Though perhaps not so obvious from this work, Mercuriale’s respect for Vesalius can be detected in his portrait by Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614) now at the Walters Art Museum (Baltimore), painted around the time that this work was published: it shows Mercuriale pointing at an open page of the Fabrica (though the image of the skeleton is reversed).
The frontispiece is divided into several sections that depict various medical topics on which Hippocrates and other authorities had written on. For details of the frontispiece, see the extended captions below.
In the frontispiece underneath the title, Hippocrates is shown against a background of the island of Cos, his birthplace. The text in the right-hand corner reads: ‘Hippocrates averts the imminent plague’. The scene thus refers to the legend that Hippocrates saved Athens from the plague (430 BC) by building a large fire. Below this scene are four medical authorities: Galen (second century AD), Hippocrates, Avicenna (980-1037), and Aetius of Amida (fl. 530). Above the title page, Hippocrates seems to be giving a tablet ‘dietetica’ to a woman against a background of hunting and cooking. The square to the left shows other authors who wrote on dietetics, namely Diocles of Carystus (fourth century BC), Crateuas (fl. 90 BC), and Oribasius (fourth century AD). The square to the right indicate Hippocrates’ other interests in exercise and taking in good air.
The rest of the left-hand column relate to surgery, as it is headed with a banner, ‘chirurgia’. Below it is a scene of two people engaged in some form of trepanning – Podalirius and Machaon were sons of Asclepius, described in Homer’s Iliad as treating those wounded in battle. In the next scene, Galen is shown dissecting a body, with two of his contemporaries (whom he mentions in his work), Alexander Damascenus and Eudemus looking on. The next image below shows venesection and cupping, both forms of extracting humours. ‘Nicolas Florentinus’ refers to Nicolas Falcucci (d. 1411 or 1412), who had written a surgical tract as well as a commentary of Hippocrates’s Aphorisms. The last scene shows the ancient anatomist Herophilus (fourth to third century BC) inspecting an instrument in front a table full of other instruments and jars (presumably for ointments and pastes) on shelves. At the bottom is written, ‘tuto, cito iucunde (safely, swiftly and pleasantly)’ a phrase similar to the one used in Vesalius’s portrait.
The right-hand column is headed by ‘Phamaceutrica’, with the authorities Aetius, Mesue (777-857), and Avicenna below, all of whom had written on medicinal drugs. Underneath them two further authors of medicinal drugs, Galen and Rhazes (865-925) are active, while Hippocrates loks on. On Rhazes’ table is a prescription with the abbreviated names of ‘diacatholicon’ and rhubarb, both laxatives, but the true identity of the rhubarb was hotly debated in the period. Below this, Theophrastus (c. 371-c. 287 BC) and Dioscorides (40-90 AD), authors on medicinal material and plants, are depicted conversing in a formal garden. By this time, a garden for the study of medicinal plants had been well established at both the Universities of Padua and Bologna. Underneath is shown a device for distillation – a furnace with a large number of alembics. In the last scene, Andromachus the Elder, physician to Nero, and Mithridates V, King of Pontus (132-63 BC) are depicted in front of pharmacy jars and rows of various ingredients. Mithridates was believed to have taken small amounts of poison in order to protect himself against poisoning, and he mixed all known antidotes into one compound, called ‘Mithridation’, which became synonymous with a universal cure. Andromachus was reputed to have created a universal antidote that replaced the ‘Mithridation’. ‘Theriac’ on the jar at the feet of Andromachus refers to the universal cure developed by Galen. In the sixteenth century, there was much debate among learned physicians about the ingredients of this theriac.
For further details about ancient medical figures, see Nutton, Vivian (2004), Ancient medicine (London and New York: Routledge)
