BERENGARIO DA CARPI, GIACOMO. 1460-1530.


Isagogae breves perlucide ac uberrimae in Anatomiam humani corporis. Bologna: Benedictus Hectoris, 15 July 1523. 4to (206 x 144 mm). Collation: A-K8. 80 leaves. Roman type, shoulder notes in gothic type. Architectural woodcut title border, 23 large woodcut anatomical illustrations (one with some early hand-coloring), and printer's woodcut device below colophon Early 19th-century half sheep and speckled boards, gilt-ruling to spine with gilt lettered leather label. D1 with minor marginal repair, D8 with two tears patched affecting woodcut border partially on verso, internal tear on A8 crossing illustration and text, some pale mostly marginal dampstaining. Provenance: Johannes Silvestris ("Sum Johannis Silvestri de Gennariis a civitate Sancti Sepulchri," contemporary inscription on title); some early marginalia.Second edition of Berengario's Isagogae, and the first to include illustrations of the heart based on dissections. Berengario earned a medical degree from the University of Bologna in 1489. In the first edition of this book, published in 1522, he claims to have performed hundreds of dissections. In his description of the heart, Berengario "sought a compromise between the Aristotelean description of a three-chambered heart and the Galenic description of a two-chambered one by declaring that the third ventricle posited by Aristotle was in the traditionally accepted Galenic pores of the cardiac septum. Although erroneous, this assertion was of some significance, for Niccolo Massa answered it in 1636 with the declaration that the heart's midwall was solid. Although Massa seems not to have realized the significance of his statement, he and Berengario unwittingly preluded the dispute that developed later in the century over the correct course of the blood from the right to the left side of the heart. Berengario was the first to describe the aorta as arising from the left ventricle" (DSB 1, pp 617-621). The lower woodcut title-border, showing the author conducting a dissection, was first used in his Commentaria of 1521. In this edition the border text has been slightly altered to read "Maria" instead of "Leo P.X.," and Berengario's name "Carpus" has been supplied in two places. The shield on the architrave has been changed to read "YHS," instead of the Medici coat-of-arms. WITH: Berengario da Carpa. A short introduction to Anatomy (Isagogae Beves). Translated by L. R. Lind. Chicago 1959. INSCRIBED AND SIGNED by the author to Dr. W. Bruce Fye. Choulant-Frank pp. 136-42; Cushing, Vesaliana 34; Garrison-Morton 368; Heirs of Hippocrates 161; see Harvard/Mortimer Italian p 12; Herrlinger pp 80-83; Putti pp 150-54; Norman 189 (this copy).