The Cathedral Library has a number of anatomy books published in the seventeenth century and today’s blog is about one of these, by Giulio Cesare Casseri, published in 1622.
The book’s full title is
“Nova Anatomia; Contines Accuratam Organorum Sensilium, Tam humanorum quam animalium brutorum, et delineationem aeris figuris affabre depictis intuentium oculis subjectam et descriptionem dilucido sermonis genere explicatem”
which roughly translates as
“New Anatomy; containing an accurate account of the organs of the senses, both of humans and of animals, skillfully made diagrams and clear descriptions.”
And this is exactly what the reader finds.
In the early modern period, medicine was moving away from the theoretical and religious approach of medieval times towards a more practical discipline. Even surgery was becoming respectable, and for the practise of surgery a knowledge of anatomy was essential!
However, the aspiring anatomist faced several practical and ethical problems. A supply of fresh corpses for dissection was needed (often those of executed criminals) and before refrigeration and the use of preserving chemicals, the process could be far from pleasant.
In ancient Greece, Galen had relied on dissection of animals and extrapolation but for the seventeenth century doctor, human anatomical knowledge was essential.
Throughout Europe, the University of Padua was famous for the availability and quality of its anatomy teaching and Guilio Casseri (1552-1616) was one of its most famous tutors.
He came from Piacenza, hence his Latinised name of Julius Placentino (from Piacenza). From a poor family, Casseri at first worked as an assistant to the famous anatomist Girolamo Fabrici (Fabricius) who had built the first permanent anatomical theatre designed for public anatomical dissections in Padua.
Casseri qualified as an anatomist and teacher, eventually becoming more highly regarded than his master which inevitably led to a professional quarrel between the two men.
Whilst Fabricius taught in public, performing his somewhat chaotic dissections in his large purpose-built lecture theatre with many assistants, Casseri ran private courses from his home. These private anatomical sessions became very popular, Casseri’s anatomical teaching was well structured, his demonstrations and drawings were meticulous. Fabrici’s dissections were more of a theatrical performance, whereas Casseri’s private anatomy sessions enabled (indeed obliged) the students to dissect and see for themselves.
In time, Casseri became Professor of Surgery and an examiner in anatomy for the University of Padua. He was one of the signatories of the doctoral thesis of Englishman William Harvey.
Casseri’s book “Nova Anatomia” presents the organs of the five senses: touch, smell, taste, hearing and sight. Each section is devoted to a particular sense, accompanied by exquisite anatomical engravings, meticulously labelled and linked to appropriate explanatory text. Their accuracy and clarity are breath-taking, and considering their grisly subject, some are quite beautiful!
The book is dedicated to Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria, which is perhaps surprising as he was a stalwart of the counter reformation and founder of the Catholic League in Germany. In the dedication Casseri explains that he will discuss his observations against the background of ideas from Hippocrates, Galen, Aristotle, Vesalius and others. This he does for each of the senses, and his text gives a flavour of how understanding of anatomy and physiology had developed since ancient times.
An introductory chapter discusses “sense” in general; what do we mean by “sensing”, how much is physical and how much emotional or spiritual? Is there an “order” of the senses, how important are the specialised sense organs to perception? Such a discussion could be heard today in any college common room.
In order to give a broad context to his work Casseri describes and illustrates comparable structures from different animals, for example the eye of a cat and the tiny bones in the ear of a mouse.
The first of the senses Casseri discusses is that of touch, writing that the touch organ resides in the dermis and not in the epidermis. He describes the palm of the hand and the sole of the foot, providing the first anatomical drawings of these.
Then he discusses the sense of taste, illustrates the extrinsic muscles of the tongue and the muscles of the larynx and says that the spongy body of the tongue is the true instrument of taste.
The sense of smell he attributes to the nose and describes the bones and muscles of the nose and the paranasal sinuses. He recognises that the nose and brain are closely linked and identifies the olfactory nerve.
Casseri describes the external and internal ear, comparing human and animal ears with diagrams of the auditory canal, tympanum and the bones of the ear.
The section on sight is the last. In it he compares eyes of people with those of animals, providing the first correct description of the orbit and of its six accessory muscles. The eyelids, tears and blinking are considered, and he discusses the vexed question of how we see.
This question had been discussed since ancient times. Was it the case that an object sends out something that the eye detected or did the eye send out something that “caught” the object. How important was light? How is colour perceived?
Cessari presents the theories of Galen, Plato, Aristotle and Democritus and explains why each was wrong. Refuting the earlier idea that the crystalline lens was the organ of vision he describes the importance of the optic nerve and argues that light is not itself a substance sent out by objects, nor a spiritual manifestation, but a natural quality needed for visual perception.
At the end of the book, Casseri provides a comprehensive index of topics that he has discussed, for example that light is perceptible by sight alone, “Lumen solo visu perceptibile esse”, that the nerves are the servants of the organs, “nervi non sunt organum sed organi ministri”, and that hysterical women survive for a long time without breathing, “mulieres hystericas per tempus longum sine respiratione superesse”.
Worcester Cathedral Library has no record of who donated this volume. Records in the Catalogue of Donations (WCL A 399i) start towards the end of the seventeenth century, some fifty years after this edition of “Nova Anatomia” was published, and it is possible that the book was already on the shelves when records began. It has no helpful signature or marginalia, so sadly we may never know who donated it or when it came into the Library.
Diana Westmoreland
Bibliography
- H Dominic W Stiles (2016) Julius Casserius Placentinus 1552-1616
- Michael Besser (2015) “The Anatomical Enlightenment” Austin Journal of Surgery Volume 2 Issue 1
- Riva Allessandro, Orru Beniamino, Pirino Alesso, Riva Francesca (2001) “Julius Casserius : The self made anatomist of Padua’s golden age” Anatomical Record 265; 168-175
- Ghosh Sanjib Kumar (2015) Human cadaveric dissection: a historical account from ancient Greece to the modern era. Anat Cell Biol. 48(3): 153–169.
- Klestinec, Cynthia. (2011) Private Anatomies and the Delights of Technical Expertise. Theaters of Anatomy: Students, Teachers, and Traditions of Dissection in Renaissance Venice. Johns Hopkins University Press.
- Nightingale Andrea (2015) Sight and the Philosophy of Vision:
Classical Greek Theories of Seeing between Democritus and Aristotle. Sight and the Ancient Senses, vol. 4 of The Senses in Antiquity, ed. Michael Squire (London: Routledge 2015) pp. 54-67. - The birthplace of modern medicine (2019) https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20190203-the-birthplace-of-modern-medicine
- 8. Royal College of Surgeons in England, A History of Human Dissection https://www.rcseng.ac.uk › files › rcs › archives
[1]Immanuel Kant “Critique of Pure Reason” (1791)
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