The flexor muscles of the arm, hand and fingers, separated from each other and raised through the use of a dowel and a perforated box. Engraving after G. de Lairesse, 1739.

[Lugduni Batavorum [Leiden] : Apud Johannem Arnoldum Langerak, 1739]

1 print : engraving ; platemark 47.1 x 32 cm

Quelques uns des muscles qui flechissent les doigts et le carpe. ; Tab. 67 Manuscript notations in brown ink Bears plate number: T. 67

L. Choulant, History and bibliography of anatomic illustration, tr. and ed. by M. Frank, Chicago 1920, revd ed. 1945, pp. 250-253

K. B. Roberts and J. D. W. Tomlinson, The fabric of the body. European traditions of anatomical illustration, Oxford 1992, pp. 309-313; 412-415

F. Beekman, "Bidloo and Cowper, anatomists," Annals of Medical History, n.s., 7, 1935, pp. 113-129

P. Dumaître, La curieuse destinée des planches anatomiques de Gérard de Lairesse, Amsterdam 1982

W. Schupbach, The paradox of Rembrandt's Anatomy of Dr Tulp, London 1982, p. 15

K. Arnold and M. Kemp, Materia medica. A new cabinet of medicine and art, exh. cat, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London 1995, pp. 53-54, no. V. 6

Wellcome Collection 27973i

The plate originally appeared in Govard Bidloo's Anatomia humani corporis (Amsterdam 1685), one of one hundred and five plates after drawings by G. de Lairesse which survive in the collection of the Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire de Médecine in Paris. Bidloo's Anatomia appeared in a Dutch translation in 1690 after which Bidloo's publishers sold the remaining pulls of the plates to the Oxford publishers (Smith and Walford) of William Cowper's Anatomy of humane bodies (Oxford 1698), in which Bidloo's plates plus an appendix of nine new plates appear. Cowper added a new text and extra lettering, by his reckoning "above 700 references", to the plates. This new lettering was applied in red ink. Cowper's Anatomy of humane bodies was successful enough to appear in two further editions: one in English (Leiden 1737) and another in Latin (Leiden 1739). In these editions Cowper's added letters are in black ink. The manuscript notation is a French translation of Cowper's description of the sixty-seventh plate in the Leiden 1739 edition: Quidam ex musculis flectentibus digitos & carpum