Organs of Special Sense

Undoubtedly two of the most beautifully illustrated of all Worth’s anatomical books were his copies of Giulio Cesare Casseri’s De vocis auditusque organis historia anatomica singulari fide methodo ac industria concinnata tractativus duobus explicata ac variis iconibus aere excusis illustrata …  (Ferrara, 1601) and William Cowper’s The anatomy of humane bodies (Oxford, 1698). Casseri (fl, 1552–1616), a professor of anatomy at the University of Padua in the sixteenth century, provided his readers with wonderful illustrations of the ear as well as organs of voice and respiration such as the larynx and trachea, while Cowper’s magnificent anatomical atlas provided excellent, if not always anatomically accurate, images of all parts of the human body, including the tongue.

William Cowper, The anatomy of humane bodies, with figures drawn after the life by some of the best masters in Europe, and curiously engraven in one hundred and fourteen copper plates, illustrated with large explications, containing many new anatomical discoveries, and chirurgical observations: to which is added an introduction explaining the animal oeconomy, with a copious index (Oxford, 1698), Table 13.

For other organs of special sense, such as the eyes and nose, Worth could look to specific texts such as William Briggs’s Ophthalmo-graphia, sive Oculi ejusque partium descriptio anatomica; nec non, ejusdem Nova visionis theoria, Regiae Societati Londinensi proposita (Leiden, 1686) for the eye. Equally, Nathaniel Highmore’s Corporis humani disquisitio anatomica in qua sanguinis circulationem in quavis corporis particula plurimis typis novis ac ænygmatum medicorum succincta dilucidatione ornatam prosequutus est Nathanael Highmorus (The Hague, 1651), though it concentrated on the circulation of the blood, also had much to say about the sinuses of the nose.

Text: Dr Elizabethanne Boran, Librarian of the Edward Worth Library, Dublin.