Thomas Vicary

Thomas Vicary, who lived from about 1490 to 1561, was an early English physician, surgeon and anatomist. Born in Kent, he began as a modest practitioner in Maidstone who learned his craft by experience, until Henry VIII advanced him after he cured the king's sore leg. He rose to sergeant-surgeon to the Royal Household and became a leading surgeon in the City of London, serving as the first master of the Company of Barber-Surgeons and again on three later occasions. He played a leading part in the 1540 union of the barbers' and surgeons' guilds, and he is shown receiving the charter from the king in Hans Holbein the Younger's painting. He secured the yearly right to the bodies of four executed criminals for anatomical teaching at the company's hall, the first formal anatomy teaching there. In 1546 he became the first superintendent of St Bartholomew's Hospital and in 1548 its resident surgical governor, a post he kept until his death. A work called The anatomy of mans body is attributed to him, though it appears he edited and republished a medieval text.