Pierre Dionis lecturing on surgery at the Saint-Côme lecture theatre in Paris. Engraving by Jean-Baptiste Scotin the younger, 1707.

Although the title describes this book by the French anatomist and surgeon, Pierre Dionis, as "A course of operations demonstrated at the Jardin Royal", this engraving is an illustration of Dionis lecturing at the theatre at Saint-Côme in Paris, now part of the Sorbonne. As Dionis explains in the preface to his Cours d'opérations demontrées au Jardin Royal, he chose to illustrate the theatre at Saint-Côme because it was then the "most magnificent" of all the lecture theatres of this type available in Paris and most suited for public demonstrations. The book is based on the lectures on surgery which Dionis gave at the Jardin des Plantes, or Jardin Royal. It is divided into ten lectures - or demonstrations - given over a period of the same number of days - an arrangement also used by Dionis in his earlier publication L'anatomie de l'homme, Paris 1690. Each of the ten parts begins with an illustration of the apparatus necessary for the operations under discussion. In the preface, Dionis describes this particular engraving as being at the head of the first demonstration. In the Paris 1708 edition, however, it is employed as a frontispiece. In his L'anatomie de l'homme of 1690, Dionis promises that a similar book on surgery will follow should his book on anatomy prove successful. Both L'anatomie de l'homme and the Cours d'opérations went through several editions. For another example of the same print, see catalogue no. 25337