Charles Estienne's De dissectione (1545): The Anatomy That Almost Beat Vesalius

A skeleton in a pastoral landscape, its bones labeled in Latin (page 13). Charles Estienne, De dissectione partium corporis humani libri tres, Paris, 1545. National Library of Medicine.

In 1545 the Paris press of Simon de Colines published De dissectione partium corporis humani libri tres, "three books on the dissection of the parts of the human body," by Charles Estienne. A French edition, La dissection des parties du corps humain, followed the next year. Most of it had been ready six years earlier. Had it appeared on time, it might have claimed many of the firsts that went instead to Andreas Vesalius's De fabrica in 1543.

A printer's son

Charles Estienne, in Latin Carolus Stephanus, was born in Paris around 1504, the third son of Henri Estienne, founder of the famous printing dynasty. Educated at home, he showed an early gift for medicine and trained as a physician. When his brother Robert, the family's celebrated printer, had to flee to Geneva in 1550 over his controversial theological books, Charles took over the Paris shop. He wrote and printed notable books on medicine, agriculture and the classics, among them L'Agriculture et Maison Rustique (1554) and Thesaurus Ciceronianus (1557). But the business failed, and by the end of the decade he was in the Châtelet prison for debt, where he died around 1564.

The title page, with a winged satyr bearing a scythe. Charles Estienne, De dissectione partium corporis humani libri tres, Paris, 1545. National Library of Medicine.

The book and the quarrel

Estienne was fascinated by dissection, and in the 1530s he began a large illustrated anatomy with the surgeon, anatomist and artist Étienne de la Rivière (died 1569). The woodcuts, by the well-known Jean "Mercure" Jollat, were mostly done by 1539. Then Estienne and La Rivière fell out, and a lawsuit followed. Colines, a close associate of the Estienne family, finally printed the book in 1545. For reasons nobody knows, many of the woodblocks had been altered before printing, some quite crudely.

The woodcuts

The figures are posed like classical statues in theatrical settings. Skeletons stand in open country or on marble plinths; flayed men raise an arm beside a ruined temple, hold up a placard, lean on a staff or lean on a sword, their muscles and veins lettered for the text. A seated series shows the brain, the top of the skull lifted away, while the subject sits on a marble bench, kneels, bows or bends over a table. A series on pregnancy and the female body places women on cushions, on a cabinet at the foot of a bed, under a pergola, in a street, in a Savonarola chair and in a birthing chair, their abdomens opened to show the uterus, the placenta and the unborn child, twins included.

A muscle figure beside a ruined temple (page 103). Charles Estienne, De dissectione partium corporis humani libri tres, Paris, 1545. National Library of Medicine.

The veins, from behind (page 135). Charles Estienne, De dissectione partium corporis humani libri tres, Paris, 1545. National Library of Medicine.

The brain, in a room with a round window (page 241). Charles Estienne, De dissectione partium corporis humani libri tres, Paris, 1545. National Library of Medicine.

Pregnancy, at the foot of a bed (page 267). Charles Estienne, De dissectione partium corporis humani libri tres, Paris, 1545. National Library of Medicine.

Twins (page 276). Charles Estienne, De dissectione partium corporis humani libri tres, Paris, 1545. National Library of Medicine.

Sources

• National Library of Medicine, Historical Anatomies on the Web: "Charles Estienne: De dissectione partium corporis humani libri tres." Further reading there: L. Choulant, History and Bibliography of Anatomic Illustration, trans. Mortimer Frank (1962), pp. 152–155; Erich Lau, Charles Estienne: Biographie und Bibliographie (1930); Morton's Medical Bibliography, 5th ed. (1991), no. 378; B. Newsom, "Estienne's De dissectione," Journal of the South Carolina Medical Association 91 (1995).