PEYLIGK’S DIAGRAM OF THE HEART, 1499
John Peyligk
Among the German anatomists of this period was John Peyligk, a Leipsic jurist, whose Philosophiae Naturalis Compendium, printed at Leipsic in 1499, contains crude anatomical illustrations.
Magnus Hundt
Far more important was the Antropologium of Magnus Hundt (1449-1519), of Magdeburg, which appeared at Leipsic in 1501. It contains four large and several small woodcuts which are among the earliest of anatomical illustrations. One of these shows the trachea on the right side of the neck, passing downward to the lungs; on the left side the oesophagus is represented. In the thorax are seen the lungs and the heart, the latter resembling the figure of this organ as presented on old playing cards. The pericardium has been opened, and the stomach and intestines are crudely figured. The diaphragm is absent.
ANATOMICAL FIGURE FROM MAGNUS HUNDT, 1501
Laurentius Phryesen
Early in the sixteenth century a Holland physician, Laurentius Phryesen (Phries, Friesen), residing in the German city of Colmar and later at Metz, wrote a popular book on medicine, Spiegel der Artzny, which was published at Strassburg in 1518. It contains two anatomical illustrations cut in wood, dated 1517, and supposedly made after the drawings of Waechtlin, a pupil of the Elder Holbein. These pictures tell their own story; they show a marked improvement over the figures which Hundt published in 1501. The other anatomical plate in Phryesen’s book is devoted to the skeleton.
