Crooke’s Woodcuts: Source and Use

The woodcut images that illustrate Mikrokosmographia were commissioned for the impressive folio anatomy manual, and I have blogged previously about their most notable subsequent use, in Jaggard’s epitome Somatographia anthropine. However, with the help of a 1937 bibliography, I have identified another medical book in which the woodcuts were used. I also recently identified what I believe to be the single source that served as the model for almost all of the woodcuts in Mikro.

Historians, bibliographers, and catalogers have regularly noted that Crooke’s illustrations are not original, suggesting a wide range of attributions, and Crooke himself identifies a handful of different sources in his preface. Part of the difficulty in pinning down a specific origin for any given image is the way that early modern medical illustrations copied and imitated each other in a vastly confusing manner; Sachiko Kusukawa’s book Picturing the Book of Nature (UChicago, 2012) provides excellent information on this topic. Although I discuss my reasoning at greater length in my current research project, I want to share here my claim that Caspar Bauhin’s Theatrum Anatomicum published in Frankfurt in 1605 was the immediate source used as the model for nearly all of Mikrokosmographia‘s woodcuts. Bauhin’s engraved illustrations are in turn copied from other sources (including, of course, Vesalius), but in terms of understanding the transmission of medical knowledge from continental Europe into vernacular English sources, knowing the immediate origin of the majority of Crooke’s illustrations is extremely helpful. (A very few of Crooke’s woodcuts, such as the illustration of surgical tools on page 27 of the first edition, do not have identifiable predecessors in Bauhin.)

Bauhin is one of the names mentioned by many, including Crooke himself, as “a” source for Mikrokosmographia‘s illustrations, but only one other place I have found identifies Bauhin as the primary source. Interestingly, that other place is another early modern medical book that used the same woodcuts. When William Jaggard’s son Isaac died in 1627, Thomas and Richard Cotes received rights to their printing business, including the woodcuts created for Mikrokosmographia. Thomas Cotes decided to use them, along with others, to illustrate The Workes of that famous Chirurgion Ambrose Parey, printed in 1634. The translation of Paré’s complete works (from the Latin, which was in turn a translation of the original French) had been completed by an apothecary named Thomas Johnson. In his prefatory letter “To The Reader,” Johnson notes:

The figures in the Anatomy are not the same used by my Author (whose were according to those of Vesalius) but according to those of Bauhine, which were used in the worke of Dr. Crooke; and these indeed are the better and more complete.

The section of Paré’s works devoted to anatomy in the 1634 volume does indeed included many of the same woodcut illustrations used in Mikrokosmographia and Somatographia anthropine, including the dissected female torso woodcut I wrote about previously, as noted above. Although I had already identified Bauhin as Crooke’s illustration source, I found the breadcrumb trail regarding the use of Crooke’s woodcuts in the Paré book, along with the bonus of the Bauhin reference, in A Bibliography of The Works of Ambroise Paré: Premier Chirurgien & Conseiller du Roy by Janet Doe (1937).

 

H.C., poet

Helkiah Crooke is best remembered for his anatomy book, Mikrokosmographia, which was first printed in 1615. However, he had an earlier foray into authorship when he wrote the prefatory materials for Paramythion: Two Treatises of the Comforting of an Afflicted Conscience, published in 1598.

Paramythion (transliterated Greek, meaning “comfort”) is a posthumous collection of the works of Richard Greenham, a clergyman beloved by English Puritans such as the Crookes. It may have been Helkiah’s brother-in-law, the Rev. Stephen Egerton, who enlisted the young medical student’s help on the volume. In 1598 Crooke was 21 years old and in between studies at Leiden and Cambridge, where he would go on to earn his MD, and where he had previously earned his BA.

In life, Greenham had been known for “the nature of his ministry to afflicted persons” (Carlson, n.p.) and “his charity to bodies and souls” (Parker and Carlson, 6). He was charmingly remembered as “that excellent Physitian of the Soule” by his contemporaries (Carlson, n.p.). Although the term “conscience” is commonly associated with a sense of morality, since the fourteenth century the word has also been used without a moral dimension, as “inward knowledge or consciousness of something within or relating to oneself; internal conviction, personal awareness” (OED def. II.7.a), which is the sense in which it appears in Paramythion. Similarly, despite the book’s religious context, the “afflictions” referred to do not necessarily or exclusively mean sin or guilt, but rather all nature of “trouble” and “dismay” from which the sufferer “cannot tell how to be delivered” (B1v). The book collects not all but many writings of Greenham’s, including the two treatises promised by the title as well as several letters and sermons and “A great number of grave and wise counsels and answers” (A4r).

To this volume Crooke contributed a dedicatory epistle, a two-page note “To the Reader,” and a prefatory poem titled “An Epigrame to the Reader.” Crooke’s verses are sympathetic and encouraging, even if he is not a gifted poet. Although still only a medical student, Crooke shows a physician’s predilection for diagnosis, prescription, and treatment; the steps of the healing process seem to correspond with his three stanzas, in which he describes the ailment, suggests a remedy, and explains the outcome:

The thirstie soule, that fainteth in the way,

Or hunger-bit for heavenly foode doth long:

The weared Hart, that panteth all the way

Oppressed with feares, & home-bread griefs among;

The blinded eye, that hunt’s the shining ray,

Or minde enthralde, through Satans wily wrong:

Let hither fare for comfort in their neede;

For smothered flames a greater fire will breede.

 

Here silver streames shall quench thy boyling heat,

And hony dewes thy hungrie stomacke fill,

Heere sweete Repose with Comfort shall intreate

Thy wounded breast to cure with busy skill,

Hence fetch thy ransome howsoever great,

A mine of treasures are in this faire hill;

From whose hye top thy scaled eies may see

A glorious light that shall enlighten thee.

 

The streames are bloud, the dew is bread frō heavē

The Rest and Comfort are cœlestiall joys;

The ransome from the crosse was freely given,

The light is faith, which darknes all destroyes.

THrise happy man that guides his steps so even,

As his pure light no gloomy darke annoyes.

His ransom’d soule æternall joys shall win

When timelye death shall blessed life begin.

Although the prefatory materials in the 1598 edition are only signed, “H.C.,” a later (and more complete) edition of Greenham’s works edited by Henry Holland identifies their author as Helkiah Crooke.

Works cited:

Carlson, Eric Josef. “Greenham, Richard (early 1540s–1594).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online ed. Ed. David Cannadine. Oxford: OUP, 2004. 6 Sept. 2016.

Parker, Kenneth L., and Eric J. Carlson. ‘Practical Divinity’: The Works and Life of Revd Richard Greenham. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998.

Greenham, Richard. Paramythion: Two Treatises of the Comforting of an Afflicted Conscience. London: Richard Bradocke, 1598.

Holland, Henry. “The Preface to the Reader.” The Works of the Reverend and Faithfull Servant of Jesus Christ M. Richard Greenham. Ed. Holland. London: Felix Kingston, 1599.

34 Copies of Crooke

As it turns out, I was lucky enough to be awarded a University of Iowa Graduate College T. Anne Cleary International Dissertation Research Award, which enabled me to take a two-and-a-half week trip to England to look at copies of Crooke’s books, along with some other things. I’ve just been back a week.

This was an intense research trip. I saw a library per day–sometimes more. I visited London, Cambridge, and Oxford. And I viewed every copy of Crooke on record in those locations: 34 copies of Mikrokosmographia and 13 copies of Somatographia Anthropine.

This bibliographic research was crucial to my dissertation work. But perhaps even more vital were the manuscripts I saw, which included Crooke’s 13 theses on anatomy from the University of Leiden, held at the Royal Society of Medicine; the Annals of the College of Physicians, with their many, many references to Crooke at varying stages of his career; and the Sloane Manuscripts at the British Library, which record printer William Jaggard’s treatment for syphilis (perhaps at the hands of Crooke himself) and several quotations from/references to Mikrokosmographia.

The trip was a pivotal event in the course of my PhD degree. It validated for me the work I am undertaking in my dissertation as well as reinvigorating my enthusiasm. Although the research I completed does not hardly represent a comprehensive survey of Crooke’s anatomy, it is a sizeable step in that direction. There were also a couple of surprises that hadn’t been on the agenda, including not one but two amazing hand-colored copies I had no idea existed. I waited until after I’d visited all the libraries to counted up the individual copies I had actually seen, and it made for a nice surprise as well as a real feeling of accomplishment. I look forward to returning to England someday to spend more time with Crooke!

Crooke at Cambridge

I have been looking up copies of Mikrokosmographia located in London and Oxbridge in preparation to apply for funding to enable a dissertation research trip late this summer/early fall.

My starting place is the English Short Title Catalogue online. Although the lists of copies provided there are notoriously unreliable, it gives me a good idea of where to go looking, including places I would otherwise never identify as a possible location for a library, much less a copy of Crooke’s book. I then visit the corresponding online library catalogs to perform searches for copies of any edition or issue of Mikrokosmographia or Somatographia Anthropine, the epitome. I very much enjoy this virtual detective work, although it tests the limits of my technological skills and proves the vagaries of various online cataloging systems and practices. It also makes me incredibly anxious to complete the investigation, which absolutely requires a physical trip to the archives.

One particularly tantalizing tidbit I uncovered is a copy of Mikro at the University of Cambridge. I should say, first of all, that there appear to be nine Crooke books at Cambridge total:

  • Mikrokosmographia
    • First edition
      • 1615 issue: 2 copies
      • 1618 issue: 2 copies
    • Second edition
      • 1631: 3 copies
  • Somatographia Anthropine
    • First edition
      • 1616: 1 copy
    • Second edition
      • 1634: 1 copy

It is also little surprise to find such a plethora of Crooke at Cambridge, as it is his Alma Mater; at age fifteen he matriculated as a sizar, earning his B.A. with John Bois at St. John’s College in 1596. After studying medicine for a time in Leiden, he returned to Cambridge and earned his medical degree in 1604.

Although the copies of Crooke’s books are scattered around the University, there is some online documentation of the one owned by Crooke’s own college, St. John’s. It is a 1618 Mikrokosmographia (third issue of the first edition). The volume–donated by Hugh Gatty, another St. John’s alum–features a contemporary binding stamped in gilt with the coat of arms of its original owner: Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford (1593-1641), and, you guessed it, also a graduate of St. John’s. Images of the binding and Strafford’s signature inside the front board of the book as well as more info about Wentworth can be found on the St. John’s College website.

I’m very much hoping that the funding comes through and I am able to complete this research. I’ve located over 30 copies to see between Oxford, Cambridge, and multiple London locations including the British Library, the Wellcome Institute, the Royal College of Surgeons, and the Royal College of Physicians. There are several other potential copies whose existence and location have been less possible to verify online. In addition to copies of Crooke’s books, I hope to view the Sloane Manuscripts that contain mentions of him, the Annals of the Royal College of Physicians in which he appears multiple times, and the manuscript copy of Crooke’s Leiden thesis at the Royal Society of Medicine.

It Takes a Village to Raise a Crooke

Today I spent some time reading and revisiting the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entries for all the people I could find related to Helkiah Crooke’s early life. There are entries for:

  • Thomas Crooke, Helkiah’s father
  • Samuel Crooke, Helkiah’s older brother
  • Stephen Egerton, Helkiah’s brother-in-law
  • John Bois, Helkiah’s tutor at Cambridge

In addition to a few amusing anecdotes, I was able to piece together some interesting information about the Crooke family. One thing I hadn’t previously realized is that there were nine siblings in all! From eldest to youngest, the four older children were Sara, Thomas, Samuel, and Helkiah. The five younger were two boys and three girls—John, Richard, Rachel, Anne, and Elizabeth—who were all still minors at the time of their father’s death in 1598.

I looked to the entry for Helkiah’s father, Thomas Crooke, hoping to find the name of Helkiah’s mother. In her husband’s will, she is identified as “Samuell my wief.” Apparently Helkiah’s older brother Samuel had the rare distinction of being named after his mother. I haven’t yet come across any other women named Samuel in the early modern period (or any other), but I’m keeping an eye out.

Interestingly (if not particularly usefully), I also discovered that, by marriage, twice-removed, Helkiah has a distant connection to John Winthrop, governor of Massachusetts. Helkiah’s older sister, Sara, married Stephen Egerton; Egerton’s younger sister Anne had a daughter, Margaret, who married Winthrop in 1618.

Helkiah’s relationship to Egerton, a puritan preacher, is far more consequential for other reasons, however. Egerton and his associate Robert Dexter gave Helkiah his first chance to appear in print. The two men were undertaking a collected edition of the works of Richard Greenham (he has his own ODNB entry), a beloved puritan clergyman who had recently died. Helkiah apparently helped with the volume’s editing and wrote an introduction and some verses that appear in its opening pages. The book, Paramthion: Two Treatises of the Comforting of an Afflicted Conscience, was published in 1598 and can be found on EEBO, complete with the portions Crooke authored.

It was not only Helkiah’s brother-in-law and father who were clergymen, however. His older brother Samuel also entered the church. Although the two men lived very different lives, I can see parallels between them. The brothers were born only a year apart, and I find it hard not to believe that they would have been close growing up. Both brothers attended Cambridge. Like his younger brother Helkiah, who at times struggled with his governing professional body (the College of Physicians), Samuel encountered complaints from the church courts. The records of both institutions show that the brothers were equally vociferous defendants of their own actions. Both men, in the course of their careers, became published authors of some fame. Ultimately, however, time was kinder to the memory of Samuel Crooke, who passed away one year after his younger brother. Although Helkiah died relatively poor and friendless, Samuel’s funeral was attended by “many hundreds,” far more than the church could hold.

On a lighter note, the entry on Helkiah’s tutor John Bois provides an amusing anecdote. Bois was a Greek scholar who is now best remembered for his work on the King James Bible, which he helped translate and annotate. Crooke initially studied with Bois for his BA degree at Cambridge, but after a brief stint at the University of Leiden, Crooke returned to England to earn his MD. Back at Cambridge, Crooke resumed his study of medicine with Bois, who had originally “thought of studying medicine but, imagining he had every disease of which he read, gave it up” in favor of Greek; Bois’s biographer amusingly describes the scholar’s attitude toward his own health as “a fetish” (David Norton, ODNB). Surely, if nothing else, Crooke’s early medical training was fastidious.

Together, along with many others we’ve lost to history, these people shaped and influenced the young physician who would become the author of Mikrokosmographia. I am grateful to have the invaluable resource of the ODNB available to shed light on some of the lesser-known connections that played important roles in Crooke’s early life.