Eustachius, Opuscula anatomica, second issue of title page

Second issue of the title page of Eustachi's Opuscula anatomica.

Eustachi, Libellus de dentibus title page
Detail map of Venezia, Veneto, Italy Overview map of Venezia, Veneto, Italy

A: Venezia, Veneto, Italy

Bartholomeo Eustachi Discovers the Eustachian Tubes and Many Other Anatomical Features

1563
Eustachi Opuscula anatomica title page dated 1563

First issue of the title page of Eustachi's Opuscula Anatomica.

In 1563 Italian physician and anatomist Bartolomeo Eustachi (Eustachius) published his Opuscula anatomica in Venice with annotations by his relative and disciple, Pier Matteo Pini. Opuscula anatomica includes 8 engraved full-page copperplate text illustrations probably drawn by Eustachi and Pini, and engraved by Giulio de Musi, probably a relation of Agostino de' Musi (Agostino Veneziano).  The illustrations are on the unnumbered pages between pp. 1-20 (first series). Pini also prepared the 168 pages of annotations to Eustachi's anatomical treatises from the writings of Hippocrates, Aristotle, Galen and other authorities. These were published at the end of the book. Pini's published dedication of these Annotationes to Eustachi is dated July, 1561. 

Written during 1561 and 1562, Eustachi's Opuscula consists of a group of anatomical treatises on the kidneys (De renum structura), the organ of hearing (De auditus organis), the venous system (De vena quae azygos graecis dicitur) and the teeth (De dentibus), which he issued together under the title Opuscula anatomica. De auditus organis is dated October 1562; De motu capitis January 1561. The dedication of Libellus de dentibus is dated December 1562.

The privilege granting rights to the publisher Vincenzo Luchino is dated May 6, 1563. Most copies of this work bear the imprint Venetiis: Vincentius Luchinus excudebat, 1564. From the setting of the type on the title page of those copies it is evident that the original imprint date was 1563 and that an additional "I" was added to the roman numeral MDLXIII to turn that number into MDLXIIII  (1564) —a contrivance since the correct roman numeral for 1564 would have been MDLXIV.

In 2010 I discovered in a group of "cripples" that I bought decades ago a very incomplete copy of the Opuscula anatomica with a titlepage dated 1563, and without the name of the publisher, confirming that some copies were issued with a 1563 date. The separate title page of Libellus de dentibus dated 1563 is similar to the first issue titlepage of the Opuscula anatomica in that it does not include the name of the publisher. Thus we may theorize that Luchino decided to add his name to the title page of the Opuscula anatomica after the printing occurred. When he did so in 1564 we may theorize most of the copies may have remained in sheets and not bound. If so, it was a matter of having the first sheet run back through the press. That may explain why both the final "I" in the roman numeral MDLXIIII and "Vincenzus Luchinus excudebat" are out of register.  In October 2012 my friend and colleague William P. Watson proposed another possible scenario: through examination of several copies of the 1564 issue Watson noticed that the printing of Luchino's name and the final "I" varies in position on different copies of the title page, and theorized that Luchino's name and the final "I" was applied through some kind of a stamp, rather than by running the sheet back through a press. Whatever the method, some copies were issued without the addition of Luchino's name and without changing the date to 1564.  Because we may never know the exact chronology or methodogy of events that occurred 450 years ago, it is reasonable to assume that the copies with the title page dated 1563 were issued before the correction, and represent an earlier state.

Eustachi's treatise on the kidney, the first work devoted specifically to that organ, showed a detailed knowledge of the kidney surpassing any earlier work; it contained the first account of the adrenal (suprarenal) gland and a correct determination of the relative levels of the kidneys. The treatise on the ear provided the first post-classical account of the Eustachian tube, while the work on the azygos vein contained the first description of the thoracic duct and of the valvula venae in the right ventricle of the heart, the so-called "Eustachian valve." In his treatise on dentistry, Libellus de dentibus, Eustachi was the first to study the teeth in any great detail: basing his work on the dissection of fetuses and stillborn infants, he gave an important description of the first and second dentitions, described the hard outer tissue and soft inner structure of the teeth, and attempted an explanation of the problem of the sensitivity of the tooth's hard structure. 

The engraved plates illustrating the Opuscula anatomica were the first eight in the series of forty-seven anatomical plates engraved by Giulio de' Musi, after drawings by Eustachi and Pini. They were prepared in 1552 to illustrate a projected book entitled De dissensionibus ac controversii anatomicis, the text of which was lost after Eustachi's death. Had the full series of forty-seven anatomical copperplates been published at the time of their completion, Eustachi would have ranked with Vesalius as a founder of modern anatomy. However, it is quite probable that because of the growing fame of Vesalius' Fabrica (1543, 1555), Eustachi did not consider publication of his remaining plates, or his accompanying manuscript worthwhile. The remaining thirty-nine plates were lost for over a century after Eustachi's death but were rediscovered in the hands of a descendant of Pier Matteo Pini by papal physician, cardiologist, and epidemiologist Giovanni Maria Lancisi, who edited them for publication, and published them, along with the previously published eight plates, under the title of Tabulae anatomicae (Rome, 1714).

Eustachi's plates are stylistically different from other sixteenth century anatomical studies, as they were produced without the conventional sixteenth-century decorative accompaniments and were framed on three sides by numbered rules providing coordinates by which any part of the image could be located. The publisher of the 1714 edition provided an unnumbered plate with graduated scales to be cut out and used as a location aid. The images are generic figures, composites of many anatomical observations, and are mathematically as well as representationally exact.

Choulant, History and Bibliography of Anatomic Illustration (1920) 200-202. Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) nos. 739-40. Norman, One Hundred Books Famous in Medicine (1995) no. 21 (stating, based on information then available to me, that the Opuscula anatomica was first published in 1563-64). When I checked OCLC in November 2010 there were four copies listed in European libraries as having the first state (1563) of the title page of the Opuscula anatomica. A somewhat larger number of listings appeared for the second state.

Timeline Themes

Related Entries

Vesalius' :

Fabrica: