However, as a physician Linacre had a special bent toward the Greek medical classics. This was manifested by the appearance in 1517 of his translation of Galen’s book On Hygiene. In 1519 this was followed by the Method of Treatment, in 1521 by the book On Temperaments, and two years later by the Natural Faculties and On the Use of Pulses. In 1524 just after Linacre’s death a sixth translation, that of Galen’s Differences of Symptoms and Causes of Symptoms, appeared. As yet very few physicians in England knew Greek, but they all knew Latin, and these accurate translations into clear, straightforward Latin made a considerable portion of Galen’s medical writings available for the first time. The contrast between medieval medical writings and those of Galen which had now been made available seemed to emphasize that general Renaissance belief that civilization had reached its peak in classical times and that much could be gained by a return to classical teachings, in this instance the teaching of classical physicians. It is true that only the Galenic books on medicine had been translated, but they were sufficient to whet the appetite for more, and as the new generation of physicians arose, now trained in Greek, if the pattern were followed, they would turn to the Galenic writings on anatomy in the original language as well as to those of Hippocrates.[20] The first of this younger generation who is recorded to have come under this Greek medical influence and made this possibility a reality produced two remarkable pioneer efforts: the first recorded dissection of a human body in England about 1531 and the first book on anatomy written in England, published in 1532, or, reckoned according to the Gregorian calendar, 1533.
The person responsible for these two milestones was named David Edwardes, or, in the Latin form he employed, Edguardus. However, very little is known of his life and activities. He was admitted as a scholar to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, on 9 August 1517, and the register of admissions indicates that he was then fifteen years old and a native of Northamptonshire.[21] He became Bachelor of Arts in 1522[22] although for a time previous to this, in 1521, he appears briefly to have held the readership in Greek, substituting for the regular reader, Edward Wotton, then abroad.[23] In 1525 Edwardes became Master of Arts,[24] and thereafter received a fellowship in the college. He is further mentioned in the account book of the college for 1527-8 as receiving 38s. 9d.,[25] presumably for further teaching of Greek.
Corpus Christi College had been founded in 1515-16 chiefly through the magnanimity of Richard Foxe, Bishop of Winchester, and was provided with its statutes in 1517. The founder, strongly interested in the newly revived classical learning had provided for a chair of Greek, which, as has been mentioned, was briefly held by Edwardes in an interim capacity, while the first president of the college, John Claymond, was likewise a strong advocate of the new learning.
Perhaps not sufficient stress has been placed upon the contribution made by physicians, at least in England, to the revival of Greek studies, although it is sometimes difficult to determine which of the two disciplines, medicine or Greek, was the impulsion to the study of the other. Both Linacre and Wotton were serious students of Greek before they undertook medical studies, but once embarked upon medicine, both of them having studied at Padua, not only did they become especially conscious of the failings of medieval medicine in contrast to the classical, but the philosophical and literary aspects of Galen’s writings must have caused them to retain a concern with Greek literature as a whole even though their primary consideration had come to be a single facet of the body of that literature. Furthermore, the scientific nature of their interest permitted no equivocation in their knowledge of the language. Translations of Galen or Hippocrates required an exactitude beyond that of purely literary treatises. But whatever the relevancy of such remarks, it is certainly of significance that among the first teachers of Greek in England were Linacre, Clement, and Wotton, all physicians, and for our present purpose as it relates to David Edwardes, it should be noted that two of these men, Clement and Wotton, were associated with Corpus Christi College.
In addition to the stress upon Greek studies which must inevitably have led Edwardes to the classical Greek writers upon medicine and conducted him along the pathway already marked out by Thomas Linacre, there were in the college certain possibly more direct influences towards an interest in medicine which have already been alluded to. In short, John Clement, the early lecturer of Greek[26] was a physician and friend of Linacre as well as a fellow in the College of Physicians of London which Linacre had inaugurated in 1518, while still another student of medicine was Edward Wotton, Reader in Greek and later physician to Henry VIII, for whom Edwardes had briefly substituted.
Still another incentive toward medical study may have been a requirement in chapter 25 of the original statutes. In accordance with this all fellows of the college who held the degree of Master of Arts were required to assume holy orders, unless deputed to the study of medicine. It has been suggested that recipients of this exception were originally expected to attend to the medical needs of the other inmates of the college,[27] and it seems likely that Edwardes was one of these medicinae deputati.
Our next record indicates that he had removed to the University of Cambridge where in 1528-9, and upon payment of 3s. 4d.[28] and after lecturing publicly upon Galen’s De Differentiis Febrium, he was incepted in medicine with recognition of ‘seven years study of medicine’, presumably at Oxford.[29]
In his only known book, to be considered later, Edwardes informs us that his first practice of medicine had been ‘at Bristol, having left my teachers only shortly before and begun to swim without any support’,[30] although it is not clear whether this represented a brief interlude between Oxford and Cambridge or after he had received his degree of Doctor of Medicine. Whatever the case may have been, the few remaining autobiographical references are to his practice in and around Cambridge. As a member of the Faculty of Medicine, it is possible that Edwardes was criticized for devoting an excessive amount of time to his private practice, since in 1530-1 permission was granted him to be excused from a statutory requirement of attendance at ‘all congregations, masses and exequies’.[31] Nevertheless he participated in the examinations of at least two students, one in 1537-8[32] and the other in 1540-1.[33]
Edwardes’s little book, to which reference was made above, was published in London in 1532 [O.S.] by Robert Redman. It is composed of two treatises of which the first, entitled On Symptoms and Prognostications (De Indiciis et Praecognitionibus), deals with uroscopy and medical prognostication, and since it represents merely the continuation of a medieval tradition it is of little importance except, as has been said, for its few autobiographical details. In his practice of medicine Edwardes appears to have represented, as we might expect, a combination of the old and the new. While giving support to uroscopy and displaying some sympathy toward folk medicine, he also gave allegiance to Hippocrates and Galen, and like his continental colleagues of this period he was not averse to the introduction of a word or even several lines of Greek into his text, so indicating his enthusiasm for and his ties with the classical revival. Furthermore, he was certainly one of the first English physicians to appreciate Linacre and terms him ‘the most learned physician of his age’.[34]
The second treatise, A Brief but Excellent Introduction to Anatomy (In Anatomicen Introductio Luculenta et Brevis), is, as has been mentioned, the first work published in England which was devoted solely to anatomy, and therefore despite its brevity it deserves some consideration in the general history of medicine and even greater consideration in that of English medicine. Turning our attention now to this treatise on anatomy it should be first noted that although printed in the same volume with the work on medical symptoms and sharing a common title-page with that work, the treatise on anatomy has a separate dedication to Henry Howard (1517?-1547), Earl of Surrey. It had been at the request of Henry VIII that this young nobleman took up residence at Windsor and lived there from 1530 to 1532 as the companion of Henry’s son, the Duke of Richmond. Since Edwardes had dedicated the first treatise to the Duke of Richmond on 21 December 1532, it is not difficult to comprehend his choice of the duke’s companion for the second dedication which bears the date 1 January 1532, or, according to the Gregorian calendar, 1533. There is nothing remarkable about this latter dedication, which contains the usual flattery, except for the final passage. There the author remarked upon the ignorance of anatomy among physicians, sometimes with lethal results. He recognized that the subject of anatomy was a difficult one, hence his treatise has been written with brevity and clarity. Later, as he promised, if opportunity were to be granted to him he would write a more elaborate work.