Comparative Guts

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Ca. 1681 Ms sin. 11, part 3 by Christian Mentzel

The personal physician to the Great Elector Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenberg and curator of his library, Christian Mentzel (1622-1701), sketched this “Viscera Man” based on a Chinese source (Image 1). Both Mentzel’s sketch (Image 3) and the printed 1597 original (Image 1) are included in the same manuscript (ms. sin. 11) that is preserved in Biblioteka Jagiellońska Kraków, Poland, digitalized by the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin.

The personal physician to the Great Elector Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenberg and curator of his library, Christian Mentzel (1622-1701), sketched this “Viscera Man” based on Chinese sources (Image 1) and an earlier European sketch (Image 4) and printed version (Image 5). Both Mentzel’s sketch (Image 3) and the 1597 printed original (Image 1) are included in the same manuscript (ms. sin. 11). This manuscript’s significance lies in its role in making the Specimen medicinæ sinicæ  (1682), the first translation into Latin of Chinese medical texts. This sketch was never published, however, nor is there any evidence that it was ever intended to be published. Rather it represents a late-seventeenth-century German physician’s effort to learn Chinese concepts of viscera via drawing.