Larkey and Temkin 289 



under the older surgeon. The trio— Banister, Read, and Clowes— were the 

 leading lights in the advance of English surgery in their time, and in the 

 works of each of them will be found letters and poems from the others, show- 

 ing their very close friendship. 11ms, in William Clowes: A short and profit- 

 able treatise touching the cure of the morbus gallicus by unctions, there is an 

 epilogue by John Banister on quicksilver. Banister lived both in Nottingham 

 and in London. 



Aside from the Historic of Man, Banister's other works are entirely surgical 

 and are translations of or treatises based on continental writers. The details 

 of these have been given by Sir D'Arcy Power. The Historic of Man was printed 

 by John Daye, London, 1578. It is a small folio of about 224 pages divided 

 into nine books, beginning with the first book on the bones and continuing 

 through the body, following a systemic arrangement. There are five woodcut 

 illustrations copied from Vesalius but reduced. Two of these are of skeleton 

 figures, two of muscle figures, and one the illustration of the instruments used 

 in dissection. 



The work is dedicated in the usual fulsome style to Sir Francis Willoughby, 

 but has a much more forthright epistle to the 'Traternitie of Chirurgians in 

 London." In this he tells his readers that he has decided to write this book 

 in English for those that do not understand Latin, and was resolved to bring 

 to these readers the best authors, explaining particularly why he had chosen 

 Columbus. "But to returne to my first determination when I had wholly given 

 my consent to this end, I might see first a farre of, what sondry and great muta- 

 tions nature hath used in the body of man since Gale?i wrote in anathomy: 

 and omitting divers old writers, whose workes had not all equall successe, I 

 came at length to Vesalius, whose whole work seemed as tedious as his Epitome 

 overcidled and short. But when I saw Fuchsius to have extract a notable Epit- 

 ome out of Vesalius and Galen, I had thought to look no further till Collurn- 

 bus appeared in my sight: whose labours then revolvyng, and seyng him in 

 some thynges use sufficient prolixitie, as in his Bookes of Bones and Muscles, 

 and in other causes to be somewhat brief (because Vesalius had sufficiently 

 handled them) as in the nutritive parts, immediately I refused to bynde my- 

 selfe to any peculiar translation, chusing rather to picke a posie of the chiefest 

 flowers from all their Gardens, the opinion oi Fernelius and others not beyng 

 utterly refused, as throughout the History is diligently noted."* 



II 



Around the middle of the thirteenth century an Arabic physician, Ibn an- 

 Nafls, described the pulmonary circulation. This is the earliest description we 

 know, and its rediscovery has put an end to the claims for priority of either 

 Michael Servetus (1553) or Realdus Columbus (1559). However, it is not prob- 



* In this and in the following quotations the original spelling and punctuation have been 

 retained, except for lengthening of contractions, and modernizing of certain typographical 

 features (s; v and u; i and j). 



