On an unpublished English anatomical treatise of the fourteenth century, and its relation to the Anatomy of Thomas Vicary / by J.F. Payne.

  • Payne, Joseph Frank, 1840-1910.
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On an unpublished English anatomical treatise of the fourteenth century, and its relation to the Anatomy of Thomas Vicary / by J.F. Payne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    3. Tlie curious name “gwidege” for the jugular veins, ex- plained by Dr. Furnivall as coming from the Arabic, is not in MS. 4. A few references to Guido=Guy de Chauliac, who must have been about a contemporary of our author, and is never mentioned by him. Vicary omits a great deal and abbreviates a great deal of the MS. His treatise cannot be more than half as long. The quotations from ancient writers are given very loosely and inaccurately by Vicary, but are the same as given fully in the MS. Most, however, are given by Mondeville. I will not weary you with more quotations. These, I think, show either one of two things : (i) Vicary was in pos- session of a copy of this treatise, of which he made an abridgment, using the same words, sometimes not under- standing them, and brought it out as his own. One does not like to think of Vicary as an actual literary impostor, and there is, perhaps, another supposition. (2) Possibly Vicary did not profess to be the author. The only absolutely known printed edition was brought out fifteen years after his death by his colleagues at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, and they may have found a ihanuscript tract which they regarded as Vicary’s, though he had never laid claim to it, and published it as his. In any case the real author or compiler was our anonymous friend of the fourteenth century, about whom I wish I knew more. Plis book is, I think, interesting as an example of the medical language of the time. Vicaiy’s book is not really an example of the language of his time, his nomenclature being quite out of date, though the spelling and diction are modernised.