Image: I hate it when I can’t find a bigger one, but here you can zoom it in infinately with l
Image: I hate it when I can’t find a bigger one, but here you can zoom it in infinately with lots of additional infoThe earliest surviving illustrated surgical codex was made for the Byzantine physician Niketas about 900 CE. It contains 30 full-page images illustrating the commentary ofApollonios of Kition on the Hippocratic treatise On Dislocations (Peri Arthron) and 63 smaller images scattered through the pages of the treatise on bandaging of Soranos of Ephesos. The Apollonian paintings represent various manipulations and apparatus employed in reducing dislocations; each of the images is framed in in the Byzantine style in an archway of ornate design.According to Karl Sudhoff, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Chirurgie im Mittelalter (1914) 4-7 the origins of these drawings go back to Alexandria or Cyprus where Apollonius wrote his commentary between 81 and 58 BCE, under the patronage of the king Ptolemaius (Ptolemy of Cyprus).“They were undoubtedly transmitted directly from antiquity, and, therefore, represent the genuine Hippocratic traditions of surgical practice as transmitted through later Greek channels to Byzantium” (Garrison, Introduction to the History of Medicine 2d ed [1917] 108).In 1495 Greek scholar Janus Laskaris purchased the Niketas Codex in Crete for Lorenzo de’ Medici. It was later acquired by Cardinal Nicolas Rudolfi, and is preserved in theLaurentian Library, Florence source -- source link
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