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In 1540 Henry VIII licensed the Company of Barber Surgeons
to anatomise the bodies of four criminals a year, and from 1557 attendance at
these dissections was made compulsory for members of the Company. Banister was
admitted to the Company in 1572 soon afterwards becoming their Lecturer in
Anatomy. Banister has been called ‘the turnkey who released anatomy [in
England] from its mediaeval bondage into the daylight of the Renaissance’ (Buckland-Wright
1985). The influence of contemporary continental anatomy is evident in his
teaching from the octavo second edition of the De re anatomica...,
(Paris,
1562) by Realdo Colombo. Colombo was an assistant to Vesalius at the University
of Padua and subsequently succeeded him.
Click on thumbnails for larger images.
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Painting commissioned by John Banister Ca 1580, table 1. [Ms Hunter 364, V.1.1] |
Table one to the left showing the anatomical instruments and the order in which they are used in dissections, together with pictures of an ape, a dog and a pig on the dissecting table. Table three to the right exhibiting a lateral aspect of the skeleton, along with the articulations of the hand and foot, femur, skull and mandible. |
Painting commissioned by John Banister Ca 1580, table 3. [Ms Hunter 364, V.1.1] |
