1517

Viscera and Bloodletting Man

Hans von Gersdorff's Feldtbuch der Wundartzney, a portable manual for military field surgeons, was first published in Strasbourg in 1517, with subsequent editions in 1528, 1535, and 1540. Whereas the skeleton sheet bears a text stating that its figure was copied from a sculptural relief on a bishop's tomb, the anatomy of Viscera and Bloodletting Man was drawn from observations of a dissection performed in Strasbourg on the body of a hanged criminal. The 1540 edition correctly depicts a three-lobed liver instead of the five-lobed one described by the second-century physician Claudius Galen, as well as showing the accurate placement of the lungs in the thoracic cavity.