CHARLES the Second, by the Grace of God, King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc., to all our subjects of whatever rank, order, or condition within our Kingdoms and Dominions, greeting.

Since it has come to our knowledge that our faithful and beloved Joannes Browne, Esquire, one of our Surgeons-in-Ordinary, has not only with supreme art, but also at no small expense, delineated, described, and placed before the eyes on copper plates the graphic anatomical icons of a treatise on muscular dissection, and that his work and study in this part has been happily employed and is deservedly approved and accepted by us: so that nothing should prevent us from honoring his arduous efforts in augmenting and adorning the anatomical collection with our Royal Diploma, by which we crown his past labors, exerted with praise in the arena of Surgeons, with a sign of our will toward him, and kindle his zeal for future merit in the field of Anatomy; therefore, by this our Imperial Edict, we sanction and establish, and make known to all our subjects in general within these our Kingdoms and Dominions, that it pleases us that the Privilege of printing the aforementioned anatomical treatise with its copper plates or figures be permitted entirely to the aforesaid Joannes Browne, most severely enjoining, prohibiting, and interdicting all and singular our subjects, wheresoever subject to our Dominion, that they shall not import, buy, sell, or in any way distribute elsewhere printed copies of this Book, or its icons or descriptions, in any Volume, for the duration of fifteen years, to be calculated from the date of this Diploma, without the consent and approval of the aforesaid Joannes Browne, his heirs, executors, and assigns; whoever shall do otherwise, they shall not escape the contempt and their own obstinacy except at the ultimate peril. Specifically, however, to the Wardens and Society of Stationers of our City of London, as well as to the farmers of customs, commissioners, or officers whoever they may be, to whom our ports are a concern, and to all other our officers and ministers whom this business in any way concerns, firmly enjoining, we command that due obedience be rendered to our royal will in this part.

Given at our Palace of Whitehall, the 22nd day of November in the 33rd year of our reign.

To the Most Famous and Learned Men, the Anatomical Readers, the Master, Wardens, and Brothers of the Society of Surgeons of London, this Myographic Exercise is willingly and deservedly dedicated.

J. BROWNE.

Among other monuments of human ingenuity and skill worthy of the praise or imitation of posterity, the anatomical resolution of the human body, such as it has been subtly and minutely cultivated in this century, is by no means to be proclaimed in the last place. For as our body is as it were a certain Temple of the soul, from whence it, conscious of present and future things, often as a foreteller, pours forth its oracles, and from the beginnings and causes of things divines the outcome of the same by a certain Divine instinct and inspiration, so the anatomical scalpel refers to the High Priest, or what the Hebrews would call the Great Priest, to whom alone it is permitted to enter within the curtain, and in the inner chambers and sanctuaries of that Temple, not once in the year, which is granted only to the priest of the Hebrews, but as often as he likes and as long as it pleases, to walk freely. Both, however, whether we consider the soul or its prison, as some call it, although, in my judgment, it should rather have been called a Palace, excels in such beauty and dignity of nature that it might deservedly seem doubtful whether the most exquisite structure of our body, or the mind in the most delightful contemplation of its dwelling, is a greater miracle. Our art reveals the hidden causes and symptoms of diseases, which without this would have been unknown and would have lain unheard of until now, and the health of the living is rescued from the trunks of the dead by the help and assistance of the anatomical scalpel: so that Surgery and Medicine are not undeservedly considered the undoubted twins of Hippocrates; the former lays the foundations, the latter builds the mass and the enviable pinnacles; from both, however, offering common work and help, a whole Apollo is born, who without either one would have remained crippled.

To you, therefore, Men of Apollo, as a testimony and monument of my duty and respect, I have decided to dedicate these Tables, in which if anything worthy of praise happens to be found, it is all—