INTRODUCTION

On 22 August 1485 the battle of Bosworth provided its victor with the throne of England. Richard III died sword in hand and was unceremoniously buried in the Grey Friars at Leicester, and on that same day the victor, Henry Tudor, was as simply crowned and acclaimed by his troops as Henry VII. So began the Tudor dynasty in England which was to last until the death of Elizabeth in 1603, to be one of the most colourful periods of English history and to witness the arrival of the Renaissance in England. Later than its manifestation on the Continent, but thereby reaping the benefits of continental developments, English humanism as a result was soon to become no mean rival. The development of English literature is too well known for comment, while classical studies, and especially those in Greek, were to rival their continental counterpart by the end of the first quarter of the sixteenth century. Science, however, and more particularly medicine, were laggards.

In those closing years of the fifteenth century which ushered in the new Tudor monarchy the art of healing derived from two sources, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and the organizations of barbers and surgeons. At Oxford medical teaching was organized by the fifteenth century, and medicine constituted one of the four faculties of the university together with theology, law, and arts. Yet at Oxford, as at Cambridge, the medical curriculum was long to remain medieval.[1] Both schools had taken their model from Paris, but whereas Parisian medicine had begun to stir and advance in the fifteenth century, the English universities remained somnolent. At Cambridge the degree of Doctor of Medicine required altogether twelve years of study based upon lectures and discussions drawn from medieval sources. While it is true that two years of this time were to be spent in the practice of medicine—seemingly a borrowing from the methods of Montpellier—there was no provision for human anatomical study,[2] although this was recognized and demonstrated with some slight annual regularity to the Parisian students from the latter fifteenth century onward.

If we turn to the other source of healing, the organizations of the barbers and the surgeons, in so far as anatomy was concerned the situation was no better and, indeed, it may be said to have been worse in view of the obvious relationship which ought to have obtained between surgery and anatomy. In London the fraternity of barbers existed as early as 1308,[3] and the craft of surgery as a body distinct from that of the barbers is recorded in 1368.[4] Both barbers and surgeons sought to establish rules of professional conduct for the members of their respective organizations as well as a period of time and a curriculum to be satisfied by aspirants to barbery or to surgery. Despite the efforts of the surgeons to control the practice of surgery, relegating to the barbers only the most simple and menial tasks, certain of the more ambitious barbers sought to go beyond such activities as beard-trimming, cutting, and phlebotomy, and this determination gave rise in the first quarter of the fifteenth century to the barber-surgeon[, no longer acting in the normal occupation of the barber and clearly divorced from his old trade.[5]

Throughout the fifteenth century the barber-surgeons and surgeons appear to have remained on fairly amicable terms, presumably carrying on much the same sort of practice. The surgeons, who took precedence on occasions of solemnities and festivities, were perhaps somewhat better trained, but nowhere is there any record that such training required the study of human anatomy.[6] One learned the trade by apprenticeship to a surgeon and by consulting textbooks of surgery. From surviving manuscripts it is possible to determine what these textual guides were: primarily such as those of the celebrated fourteenth-century surgeons, Gui de Chauliac and Henri de Mondeville. It is true that late medieval surgeons were accustomed to introduce the surgical subject by a short anatomical preface, medieval in character, the result of cursory and incomplete post-mortem examinations, but hardly sufficient to permit a proper grasp of anatomy even were that possible of attainment from literary sources.

Hence the opening of the Tudor dynasty in England witnessed a medicine and a surgery lacking the essential and fundamental knowledge of the human structure. The traditions of English medicine were medieval, and medieval medicine had not concerned itself especially with anatomy. If we compare continental medicine of the same period the situation is found to be considerably different. In the course of the fifteenth century anatomy was being practised—diffidently to be sure, but nevertheless recognized and employed in Paris where the first human dissection, in the form of a brief autopsy, had been performed in 1407.[7] The first human anatomy mentioned in the Commentaries of the Medical Faculty of Paris was performed in 1477-8 on the body of an executed criminal,[8] but the incident is recorded without any suggestion of its being a novelty and so raises the possibility that there may have been other dissections in previous years. The practice of human anatomy was even earlier in Italy where there is record of an autopsy in 1286,[9] and in 1316 Mundinus, called the ‘Restorer of Anatomy’, completed his Anothomia in which he describes his systematic dissection of the human body. Official decree permitted the practice of human dissection in many cities, especially those with medical schools, and such official recognition was granted at Bologna in 1405[10] and at Padua in 1429.[11] Elsewhere similar recognition of human dissection was obtained at Montpellier in 1340,[12] at Lerida in 1391,[13] at Vienna in 1435,[14] and at Tübingen in 1485.[15] As a consequence, by the opening of the sixteenth century a series of anatomical texts, based in varying degrees upon human dissection, began to appear, such as those of Benedetti, Achillini, and Berengario da Carpi.

The difference can be explained, at least in part, by the fact that on the Continent the classical revival of the Renaissance had caused or was causing medieval tradition to be replaced by that of classical antiquity. The Renaissance represented an effort to revive the spirit and interests of the classical world, and classical antiquity had been much interested in the structure of man. Especially important was the recovery of the Greek language and literature since it made possible the recovery of the writings of the great classical physicians, notably Hippocrates and Galen, for generally speaking classical Greece had shown more interest in human anatomy than had classical Rome. This recovery had occurred first in Italy, then moved northward across the Alps and only in the early sixteenth century did it reach England.

While even earlier some Englishmen had travelled to Italy to study the classical revival at its source, and even to study the more advanced Italian medicine of Padua, it may be said that Thomas Grocyn was the first significant leader of the new classical movement in England, in particular the recovery of Greek. He had managed to learn some Greek even in England, but it was not until after a trip to Italy in 1488, where he spent two years, that he returned to instil Oxford with an enthusiasm for classical Greek humanism.[16] But if Grocyn is of importance as an English pioneer in the recovery of Greek and Hellenic studies, of far greater importance for the present subject was Grocyn’s lifelong friend and ultimately the executor of his estate, Thomas Linacre.

Linacre looms very large in the revival of classical medicine which gave a general impetus toward a better and more modern medicine. Born at Canterbury about 1460 he was led ultimately by his studies to Oxford where he became a fellow of All Souls College in 1484.[17] Although by this time he could make some beginnings of the study of the revived classical literature, and even Greek, at Oxford, nevertheless it was still desirable if possible to pursue such studies in Italy, and with the opportunity offered him, Linacre travelled to that land about 1487, remaining at least until 1496,[18] in which latter year he received the degree of Doctor of Medicine from the University of Padua.[19]

Returned to England, Linacre taught Greek at Oxford. Grocyn was his friend, Sir Thomas More his pupil, and upon the arrival at Oxford of Erasmus, that great classical scholar likewise became an intimate, all of them enthusiasts and promoters of Greek studies.