André Du Laurens, Historia anatomica humani corporis et singularum eius partium multis controversijs & observationibus novis illustrata, Frankfurt a. M.: Matthaeum Beckerum imp. Theodorici de Brij viduae …, 1600, plate size 27.4 x 18.8 cm, Keynes.T.7.10

André Du Laurens (1558-1609) had studied medicine at Paris and Montpellier, and became Royal physician to Henry IV, to whom this Anatomical history of all the parts of the human body, illustrated with new debates and observations was dedicated. Du Laurens divided anatomy into the one that was learnt in the dissection hall, and the other learnt through the voice of teachers (in person and in print); the former was practical, the latter was theoretical; the former was called ‘historical’ and the latter ‘scientific’. Books and bodies were thus complementary for Du Laurens. The controversies discussed in this book were theoretical in nature, and the book was a rather conservative defence of Galen’s authority, but was printed several times and used as a textbook.

In this frontispiece, under the title is the portrait of the author in a roundel, surrounded by the inscription: ‘Andreas Laurentius, counsel and ordinary physician to Henry IIII, King of France and Navarre, at the age of 39’. Next to the roundel are two muscle figures recognizable from the Fabrica. At the top sits a skeleton with a scythe and a sand clock to the side, aiming a cross bow right at the viewer. The two jars either side of this figure of death may be incense jars, countering the smell of cadavers.

Du Laurens argued that as a knowledge of oneself and a knowledge of God, the maker of the human body, anatomy was necessary for physicians, and useful for others, such as philosophers and craftsmen.