Walther Hermann Ryff, Omnium humani corporis partium descriptio seu ut vocant anatomia, Strasbourg: ex officina libraria Balthassari Pistoris et Balthassar Beck, 1541, A[1] recto, woodcut, leaf height 30.8 cm N*.3.17(B).

Walther Hermann Ryff (c. 1500-1548) was a trained apothecary who is better known as a plagiarizer of books, and this particular book contains images copied from the works of Vesalius, Berengario and Dryander.

In 1517, Wendelin Hock, a physician who had probably studied medicine in Italy, dissected a body in Strasbourg in front of barbers and surgeons. A broadside showing this dissected body was printed, which was in turn adapted in a book by a local surgeon, Hans Gersdorff’s Feldtbuch der Wundtartzney (1517). This was copied in turn into a seated figure in Ryff’s book.

Ryff’s woodcut uses letters A to I twice, with the names of the organs keyed to the letters in the text above; the lungs are given different letters for the right (L) and the left (K), while the kidneys are given the same letter (B). In terms of the information conveyed, this figure is similar to the more diagrammatic figure of gross anatomy in Gonville and Caius manuscript or the Margarita philosophica. In other words, this dissected body adds a sense of realism to the image, but includes no new anatomical information as a direct result of dissection.

This copy belonged to Thomas Lorkyn (1528-1591), regius professor of physic in the University of Cambridge.