Fasciculo de medicina.

Venice, 1507.

"This Italian translation contains an entirely new and more extensive series of woodcuts and additional text [than Fasciculus medicinae] The dramatically improved and more realistic illustrations, which were reproduced in the numerous later editions, are by an unknown artist, about whom there has been much speculation. He was certainly close to the school of Bellini. The dissection scene appears in colour only in this edition and is one of the first three known examples of colour printing, its four colours having been applied by means of stencils" (Morton's Medical Bibliography, Fifth Edition, Edited by Jeremy M. Norman)..

Lippmann (Wood engr. pp.99-103) speaks very highly of these fine woodcuts. "The design is undoubtedly by an artist closely related to Gentile Bellini…There is a statuesque ease in the arrangement of the compositions, which gibes them an appearance of relief, and harmonises admirably with the simple and firm outline-drawing. The scenes which exhibit the dying plague-patient, and the consultation of doctors, have a touch of solemn gravity which Venetian art knew so well how to infuse into the representation of important incidents."

"Johannes de Ketham, a German physician, edited the Fasciculus Medicinae, a collection of medical writings, which first appeared in a Latin edition in Venice, 1491. The personality of Ketham remains a mystery. Symphorien Champier in his De medicinae claris scriptoribus, Lyon, 1506, described him as 'Johannes de Karthan by nation a German, a man sufficiently learned in medicine, more active in experiment than in theories or speculations, wrote these works in medicine, of which I have seen the following : fasciculus medicinae lib. 1, de venenis liber 1, de anathomia et urinis lib. 1. I have seen no others,' Attempts have been made to identify him with Johannes de Kirchheim, mentioned in the records of the University of Vienna as 'Doctor Johannes de Kircham.' In spite of extended researches by Sudhoff and others, his identity remains unknown. The Fasciculus contains a treatise on anatomy, on surgery, on gynecology and obstetrics, on urine, on phlebotomy, and on the plague"
(A History of Medicine, Ralph H. Major).

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