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Historical Bibliography Updated: May 20, 2020

The byrth of mankynde.

Publication Details

London: T. R., 1540 CE.

The first English treatise on midwifery, translated by Richard Jonas from the 1532 Latin translation by Roesslin the Younger (De partu hominis) of Roesslin's work (1513). The 1540 English edition was illustrated with two sheets, printed on both sides, of crudely engraved "birth fygures" copied from Roesslin's woodcuts. These also appear, with minor changes "Stoole" for "Stwle") in the second edition of 1545. The second edition  was edited by the physician, Thomas Raynalde, who intended to augment it with a section on anatomy and illustrations of the female reproductive organs, but his intentions were not fully realized. Copies of the 1545 edition contain two engraved representations of the male trunk, possibly engraved on a one plate, printed on a single sheet, folded and stitched in the quire. They are engraved on a different plate, but correspond with the first and second figures on plate 30 of Germinus (1545), except that fig. 1 is reversed. Hind, Engraving in England pp. 44, 53-55. Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science & Medicine (1991) No. 1844, with more extensive discussion of the 1545 edition. These engravings, and those in Geminus's anatomy, are the earliest engravings published in England.

Catalog MetadataReference Information
Entry Number#6139
Permanent Linkhttps://hom-sveltekit.fly.dev/entry/7681
Author Bio LinkWikipedia ↗
External URLthe-byrth-of-mankynde-by-thomas-raynalde

Geographic Context

Publication place: London