Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/591

pregnancy.) Five years later he published the treatise on human anatomy ("L'anatomie de l'homme, etc.," Paris, 1690) upon which his celebrity largely rests. This book passed through numerous editions and was translated into Latin, Dutch and English (1723), and also Chinese; this last piece of work being done by the Jesuit missionary, Father Parrenin, at the request of Cam-Hi, Emperor of China, who died in 1723. Another treatise, which perhaps contributed, even more than did his Anatomy, to render Dionis celebrated, is that which bears the title: "Cours d'opérations de chirurgie démontrées au Jardin-du-Roi," Paris, 1707; and later translations into German, Dutch and English. This book covers the entire field of operative surgery, and its subject-matter is most methodically arranged. It contains a large number of precepts which are as sound to-day as they were two hundred years ago. From the frequent mention which Dionis makes of the diseases to which the teeth are liable, and from his descriptions of the operations that may be performed for the cure or relief of these disorders, one is justified in drawing the conclusion that, at that early period, this branch of surgery was not, as many suppose, abandoned entirely to charlatans.