"The Anatomie Mandchoue is a series of graphic illustrations of the human body and its organs with explanatory notes in the Tungus language. It was completed during the reign of the Manchu Emperor K'ang Hsi (1661-1722) .... The graphic materials ... consist of 90 hand-drawings of human organs. There is fairly strong evidence internally that much of the compilation making up the Anatomie Mandchoue was determined not only by compromise but in an attempt to satisfy the questions of the Emperor concerned with his own illness and therefore related to what we call today physiology ... (Fr.) Parrenin discusses the influential relationship which developed between the Emperor and Father Bouvet, and tells us that he was instructed by the Emperor to translate into Manchu (that is, the language of Tartary) a complete text on anatomy and another on systematic medicine (see Lettres edifiantes 1726, collect., XVII). To this end, he chose the text of Pierre Dionis (ob. 1718) because of its greater accuracy, but largely substituted illustrations from the work of Thomas Bartholin.... Father Parrenin states that he used the text of Pierre Dionis because of its greater accuracy and clarity, he also informs us that he chose the work 'as it was representative of French opinion and indicated all the recent advances as indicated in the title' and added the illustrations from Thomas Bartholin being larger and better engraved. Nevertheless he admits to drawing upon Latin, French and Italian anatomies as the foundation of his work. The internal evidence points to the fact that the illustrations are derived from more than Bartholin and Dionis. Although the text may be primarily from Dionis, the illustrations ... are a heterogeneous lot from a number of sources, but principally from Bartholin, there is clear evidence that several of the illustrations are derived from the work of the Spanish anatomist Juan Valverde di Hamusco who published his Historia de la composician del cuerpo humano, Rome, 1556, in which Realdo Colombo's discovery of the pulmonary transit of the blood is first described." —-Introduction.