In the Charter by which the union was officially sanctioned, a statement is to be found which was to be of particular importance to the advancement of anatomical knowledge:
the sayd maysters or governours of the mistery and comminaltie of barbours and surgeons of London, and their successours yerely for ever after their sad discrecions at their free liberte and pleasure shal and maie have and take without contradiction foure persons condempned adiudged and put to deathe for feloni by the due order of the kynges lawe of thys realme for anatomies without any further sute or labour to be made to the kynges highnes his heyres or successours for the same. And to make incision of the same deade bodies or otherwyse to order the same after their said discrecions at their pleasures for their further and better knowlage instruction insight learnyng and experience in the sayd scyence or facultie of surgery.[38]
It is of interest to note that very soon after the Charter had been granted, Thomas Vicary approached the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London to make sure that the Barber-Surgeons should receive the bodies of the felons for anatomical study. It would seem that the Court of Aldermen were not sure how they should direct their Sheriffs, for the Minutes of the Court for 14 December 1540 state:
... Item, Master Laxton & Master Bowes, Shreves of this Citye, prayed the Advyse of this howse for & concernying the Delyuerye ouer of one of the dedde bodyes of the Felons of late condempned to dethe within this Citye, And requyred of the seyd Master Shreves by Master Vycary & other the surgeons of this Citye for Annotamye, Accordyng to the fourme of an Acte of parlyament thereof lately made. And Agreyd that the same Acte be first seen & then Master Shreves to work ther after.[39]
With human dissection material assured, the United Company proceeded to appoint a Reader of Anatomy, the first perhaps being Thomas Vicary, and although the intervening records of the company are not complete, it is known that in 1546 Dr. John Caius, lately returned from Padua, where he had been acquainted with and even lived for a time with the celebrated anatomist Andreas Vesalius, was appointed and held the position of Reader of Anatomy for the next seventeen years. In his brief autobiography Caius refers to these dissections which he performed ‘for almost twenty years’, and adds, ‘By the wish of the most illustrious prince Henry VIII, King of England, I performed them in London before the surgeons; among the physicians at that time there was no dissection.’[40] It may be assumed, however, that by ‘physicians’ Caius was referring to those of London rather than to those of the universities. Nevertheless, his remark helps to explain the lack of anatomical works which might have competed with those of the Continent. The physicians, although better trained in languages than the surgeons and, we may assume, literary exposition, were as yet not interested in the subject of anatomy.
Nevertheless it does seem somewhat incredible that the physicians were so late in taking up the practice of human dissection. While it is always dangerous to exceed the limits of evidence, this peculiar situation in regard to the College of Physicians of London requires that attention be called to a statute of the college reproduced by Munk who gives it the date 1569-70.[41] According to this authority, the terms employed in the statute, reproduced below in translation, suggest that human anatomical dissection was already being employed by the physicians of the college at the time, although it seems impossible to determine whether or not the reference is to a period earlier than 1565 when Elizabeth granted them four bodies annually for anatomical purposes.[42] However, it seems unlikely that the college, which was so concerned with the enforcement of laws concerning medicine would itself perform an illegal action and therefore that Elizabeth’s grant to the college most likely introduced it to human dissection. Furthermore, one wonders just how frequently the college employed its new right, and in this respect it is interesting to note that there is no reference either to Elizabeth’s grant or to any dissection at all in the Annals of the college as written by John Caius.[43]
Although the study of human anatomy was now officially recognized and regularly pursued, at least in London, it would be incorrect to believe that native English anatomical writings would be forthcoming to continue the course modestly established by David Edwardes. The apathy or even hostility of physicians toward anatomical studies was an obstacle experienced earlier on the Continent and referred to by Vesalius who contributed no small share to the growth of anatomy’s respectability in the eyes of physicians. However, the time lag between the Continent and England had resulted in a disregard of anatomical studies by English physicians at the very times when continental physicians had begun to interest themselves in the subject and publish anatomical studies. As a result it was inevitable that for such Englishmen as were interested in anatomy it was easier to import the more advanced and elaborate continental texts, and dependence on such alien works was for long to be the regular pattern. But even with these advanced, contemporary works available, the practice continued among the surgeons of republishing old and obsolete anatomico-surgical treatises of late medieval times. If such a practice was dictated by an elementary knowledge, certainly the continuance of it would not lead to any development.
In 1544 a Flemish engraver named Thomas Lambrit, better known under his pseudonym of Geminus, engraved on copper a series of anatomical figures plagiarized from the Fabrica and Epitome of Vesalius. Geminus displayed the plates, which are of considerable artistic merit, indeed, the first of high quality to be produced in England, to King Henry VIII. That monarch, aware of the need of anatomical books to bolster the anatomical teaching now in progress, urged Geminus to publish his engravings. Never one to scorn the chance of gain, Geminus proceeded to follow this royal advice in the succeeding year (1545) and added to his plates a dedication to the king and the text of Vesalius’ Epitome.[44] For some peculiar reason the completely innocent John Caius has occasionally been blamed as the impetus to this plagiarized publication despite the fact that Geminus states plainly in his preface that Henry VIII was responsible for his decision to publish.
While the illustrations plagiarized from Vesalius may have been of some pedagogical value, the text of the Epitome certainly was no anatomical manual, and the fact that it was in Latin, which many if not most of the surgeons could not read, gave it even less value.
It was perhaps at least partly for these reasons that Thomas Vicary appears to have issued in 1548 an anatomical text in English entitled A Profitable Treatise of the Anatomie of Mans Body. No copy of it is known to exist today, and its existence is realized only through mention of it on the title-page of an edition published in 1577 by the surgeons of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital and a reference to it in 1565 by another surgeon, John Halle, who refers to Vicary as ‘the firste that euer wrote a treatyse of Anatomye in English (to the profite of his brethren chirurgiens and the helpe of younge studientes) as farre as I can learne’.[45] However, to refer to the ‘profite’ and ‘helpe’ to be obtained from Vicary’s treatise is to reveal the deplorable state of anatomical studies in England at the time and to cause one to wonder if Halle had read by way of contrast the continental writings of that period. It seems very likely that what has been termed Vicary’s anatomy was nothing other than a copy of a manuscript, presently in the Wellcome Historical Medical Library in London, dated 1392 and merely a compilation of Lanfranc, Henri de Mondeville, and Gui de Chauliac, the most recent of them dead in 1367. Thus not only was Vicary’s work not based upon dissection, except for a secondhand account of crude fourteenth-century autopsy, but it represented a definite case of retrogression.