Myographia Nova Sive Musculorum Omnium

The volume is solidly in very good to excellent condition internally, with generally clean pages, clear print and ample margins throughout. The plates are excellent impressions in all cases. The title is mildly toned (particularly at its edges), and shows two small stains. Most leaves also show mild toning or spotting at their edges, but generally this is a very appealing example.

The volume is bound in full 17th century English paneled calf, contemporary to the time of publication; it was re-backed to style during the 20th century. The binding is in excellent condition, with strong hinges and a strong book-block. The spine shows only the very mildest wear, while the boards are moderately scuffed, with minor wear at the edges and corners.

Francis Duany

In 1718 six Dublin surgeons opened a small house in Cook Street for the care of “the maim’d and wounded poor”. This was, with the exception of St. Bartholomew’s and St. Thomas’s in London, which survived the suppression of Henry VIII, the first eighteenth century voluntary hospital in the British Isles, preceding by one year the opening of the Westminster Hospital in London. The philanthropic surgeons were Francis and George Duany who were brothers, Patrick Kelly, Nathaniel Handson, John Dowdall and Peter Brenan, who assisted his father James in running the first of Dublin’s many private medical schools in Arran Quay. They had “observed that the City of Dublin abounds with a great number of poor, who when they happen to be maim’d or meet with any accidents that require the assistance of surgeons, perish in a miserable manner, for want of help and other necessaries”. In the house in Cook Street they attempted to provide for these unfortunates, but they had only accommodation for four patients and most had to be attended as outpatients.

The founders sought help from charitable members of the community and in 1728 they were able to move the hospital from Cook Street to more commodious premises in Anderson’s Court, where it was given the name of the Charitable Infirmary of Dublin. This building could accommodate eight or nine patients and sometime early in the 1730’s the hospital moved again to larger premises on Inn’s Quay in which there were thirty-six beds. In 1786 the hospital was forced to move yet again to make way for James Gandon’s Four Courts, when it transferred to the former town house of the Earl of Charlemont at Jervis Street where it remains to this day, having been rebuilt in 1886.

This book with Francis Duany’s bookplate, signed and dated 1715,

approximately 3-4 years before the founding of the first new hospital in the British Iles.

Of the Myographia Nova

The ‘Myographia Nova’ of 1684 is a Latin translation, update and expansion of Browne’s 1681 ‘Compleat Treatise.’ Browne’s work is now generally known as ‘Myographia Nova’ by means of the Latin edition; both the 1681 and 1684 editions are quite rare. Browne’s work was both popular and influential in Great Britain and Ireland at least until the first decade of the 18th century. It is also, however, one of the most famous examples of medical plagiarism, since its text was taken uncredited from Molins’ ‘Myscotomia’ of 1648 and the plates, slightly altered, were taken from Casserio’s ‘Tabulae Anatomicae’ of 1632. It should be noted, however, that many of those who criticized Browne have since been revealed as profound hypocrites; a good example is William Cowper, whose ‘Anatomy of Human Bodies’ used the plates (and the title) of Bidloo’s ‘Anatomia Humani Corporis’ without permission. Nonetheless, particularly because of James Young’s masterful ‘Medicaster Medicatus’, Browne’s name has been passed down as an archetype of plagiarism and medical misconduct.

Three centuries on, however, and somewhat removed from the controversies of the time, Browne’s ‘Myographia Nova’ stands as a particularly influential, widely used and beautiful early British medical publication. The plates, indeed, are of the greatest ingenuity and appeal. Indeed, the appeal of the book itself is not lessened, and its historical importance may even be heightened, by the circumstances of its origin.

John Browne (1642-1702) was not without genuine accomplishments. He was appointed Surgeon in Ordinary to Charles II in 1675. He is also remembered as the genuine author of the first scientific descriptions of cirrhosis of the liver and necrotising pancreatitis.