Scroll (298 x 7160 mm.), gold-flecked inner front endpaper. [Japan]: late Edo.

Laurent Heister’s great Chirurgie (1st ed.: 1718), one of the most important 18th-century surgery textbooks, went through many editions and translations. We know that a copy of the second Dutch edition of 1755, translated by Hendrik Ulhoorn, had been brought to Dejima in Nagasaki, where it was much studied, copied, and translated by Japanese doctors for the next 75 years. Heister’s writings and illustrations of bandaging techniques were particularly valued.

This scroll contains 172 finely drawn images of many kinds of bandages and bandaging techniques (including bandages for... More