CATALOGUE 50 Rare Books
NIGEL PHILLIPS
The Cart House
Paddock Field
Chilbolton
Hampshire SO20 6AU England
Antiquarian Books (Member: A.B.A. & I.L.A.B.)
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CATALOGUE 50
Illustrations of all the books in this catalogue can be seen on the website.
Cover design from item 140, Sastago.
. © Nigel Phillips 2025
1. ADAMS, George. Lectures on Natural and Experimental Philosophy, considered in it’s present state of improvement. Describing, in a familiar and easy manner, the principal phenomena of nature; and shewing, that they all co-operate in displaying the goodness, wisdom, and power of God. London: Printed by R. Hindmarsh...; Sold by the author, No. 60, Fleet-Street. 1794.
5 volumes, 8vo; vol. I: pp. xlviii, 548, engraved allegorical frontispiece; vol. II: pp. vii, 561, 1 leaf; vol. III: pp. vii, 579; vol. IV: pp. viii, 576; vol. V: pp. 43, (1), 39 folding engraved plates. Contemporary tree calf, very competently rebacked, flat spines with double gilt rules and red and green morocco labels, edges rubbed and some light browning of the paper but a very good set. Armorial bookplates of Thomas N. Parker (see below).
£1600
FIRST EDITION. The last work published by George Adams junior (1750–1795), who continued his father’s business and the position of mathematical instrument maker to George III, and was also optician to the Prince of Wales. This is his largest work, the lectures being on air, sound, fire, fluids, optics (including telescopes and microscopes), mechanics, hydraulics, astronomy, electricity and magnetism, and meteorology. The fine suite of plates illustrates hundreds of instruments and experiments.
Thomas Netherton Parker (1772–1848) of Sweeney Hall, Oswestry, was an amateur engineer and agriculturalist with a wide interest in practical things and new developments in technology. He is probably the Thomas Parker of Oriel College, Oxford, who is listed among the subscribers.
2. ADAMS, William. On Contractions of the Fingers (Dupuytren’s and Congenital Contractions.) and on “Hammer-Toe”. Including two essays of Dupuytren’s contraction of the fingers, and its successful treatment by subcutaneous divisions of the palmar fascia, and immediate extension. One essay on congenital contraction of the fingers... One essay on the successful treatment of hammer-toe... And one essay on the obliteration of depressed cicatrices after glandular abscesses, or exfoliation of bone by a subcutaneous operation. Second edition. London: J. and A. Churchill,... 1892. 8vo, pp. xx, 1 leaf, pp. 154, (1) adverts, and 8 plates with 9 leaves of explanation. Half-title, 31 illustrations in the text. Original red cloth. Small label removed from foot of front pastedown, a few library stamps (on verso of title and elsewhere), but a very good, clean copy.
£250
Second edition, enlarged from the first of 1879 by several additional essays and 4 more plates. “It was Adams’s use of the principle of subcutaneous surgery that led to his monograph on its use for Dupuytren’s contracture, in which he also described a method of relieving depressed scars, such as those from old tuberculous sinuses of the neck… William Adams should have his name coupled with the operation of subcutaneous fasciotomy for Dupuytren’s contracture” (Boyes, On the shoulders of giants, 1976, pp. 49–52).
3. ALBINUS, Bernard Siegfried. Explicatio Tabularum Anatomicarum Bartholomei Eustachii… Auctor recognovit, castigavit, auxit, denuo edidit. Leidae Batavorum [Leiden]: Apud Joannem & Hermannum Verbeek, 1761.
Large folio, 2 leaves (half-title and title), pp. 295, (1), and 47 engraved plates on 43 leaves + 54 outline plates on 50 leaves. Title printed in red and black with engraved vignette, woodcut initials. Contemporary mottled calf, spine richly gilt in compartments (head of spine worn and short crack at top of upper joint, tip of one corner worn) with red morocco label, sides with floral gilt border (missing silk ties), blue marbled edges. Arms of Rotterdam in gilt on sides; bookplate of the Dutch physician J.A.J. Barge (1884–1952).
£3200
Second edition (first, 1744) to be edited by Albinus of Eustachius’s anatomical plates, made in 1552 but not printed and published until 1714 (G&M 391). Regarded as being more accurate than those of Vesalius, Eustachius’ illustrations show him to have been in the forefront of early anatomical investigation.
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As with other critical editions which Albinus published, this is a beautifully produced book. The plates were re-engraved by Wandelaar, who was the engraver for Albinus’s own anatomical plates, and lettered outline plates were provided. Some of the full-figure plates have two outline plates, lettered and unlettered. Albinus wrote the preface, and added extensive notes to each plate. Inserted at the beginning is a printed leaf dated 1805 recording the graduation of G.H. Waebler from the Gymnasium Erasmianum in Rotterdam (hence the arms on the sides), the second oldest school in the Netherlands. The leaf is completed in manuscript and signed by the rector and teachers. Albinus’s edition, according to C.D. O’Malley in DSB, “is the most desirable one for purposes of study.” Much rarer than the 1744 edition, Choulant (p. 202) clearly never saw a copy of this edition as he gives the incorrect date and says it was unillustrated.
4. ALEMBERT, Jean le Rond d’. Opuscules Mathématiques, ou mémoires sur différens sujets de géométrie, de méchanique, d’optique, d’astronomie &c. A Paris: Chez David (vols. 3–6, chez Briasson; vols. 7 & 8, Chez Claude-Antoine Jombert)… 1761 (–1780).
8 volumes, 4to, with 30 folding engraved plates. Contemporary sheep-backed boards, flat spines gilt with two green morocco labels, pink marbled sides, vellum tips. Some light foxing but a good set. Bookplate of the Bibliotheca Mechanica in vol. 1, and of David L. DiLaura in each volume.
£5950
First edition of the valuable and important collection of 58 of d’Alembert’s most notable memoirs on mathematical, astronomical, optical and mechanical subjects which he contributed to the Paris and Berlin Academies after 1760. They include many new solutions to problems he had previously attempted. It is the best collection of his mathematical articles that exists, and includes his extensive writings on optics between 1760 and 1770, virtually all of which were devoted to the theory of lenses. DiLaura, Bibliotheca Opticoria, 454. Despite the bookplate this does not appear in Roberts & Trent, Bibliotheca mechanica.
Leading Authority on Aristotle
5. ALEXANDER OF APHRODISIAS. Enarratio de Anima ex Aristotelis institutione. Interprete Hieronymo Donato. [Colophon:] Impressum Brixiae [Brescia]: ...Bernardini de Misintis…13 September 1495.
8vo, 91 unnumbered leaves (of 92, lacking the initial blank). Title taken from incipit on f. a5, woodcut initial on a2, capital spaces with guide letters. Upper outer corners of first 6 leaves neatly restored, several gatherings lightly browned, some small stains on the first and last few leaves. Early vellum (rather marked and stained, endpapers sometime replaced), long inscription in Italian pasted to front pastedown about Pomponazzi and his use of Alexander’s text. Some short early marginal notes (some cropped); bookplate of David L. DiLaura.
£12,000
FIRST EDITION of the highly influential commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima (On the Soul) by Alexander of Aphrodisias, a Peripatetic philosopher of the second-third century whose fame rests mainly on his interpretation of Aristotle’s doctrines, earning him the sobriquet of ‘the interpreter’. The object of his work was to free the doctrine from the syncretism of Ammonius and to reproduce the pure doctrine of Aristotle. It is here translated into Latin for the first time by Girolamo Donato (1457–1511), which gave it a much wider readership but at the same time gave rise to controversy among Renaissance scholars and theologians as Alexander argued for the impossibility of immortality of the human soul.
As the soul is inseparable from the body (and therefore not immortal) much of the later part of the work includes chapters on the senses (De Auditu, De Olfacto, De Gustu, etc.). Aristotle dissected the ear in many animals, and described its anatomy, as well as the anatomy of the nose and throat. Alexander advances and describes Aristotle’s theory of light and vision, setting out the full process of vision and in so doing applies geometrical optics to Aristotlean theory for the first time.
“He was, of course, not the first commentator on Aristotle. But posterior exegetes certainly treated as exemplary his method and his standards for explaining problems and obscurities in Aristotle’s texts. This is indicated both by explicit references in later commentators and by the unacknowledged exploitation of his work in some extant later commentaries on the same texts. As
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the translations of his work into Arabic and, to a lesser degree, into Latin show, he continued to be treated as a leading authority and his work influenced the Aristotelian tradition throughout late antiquity, the Middle Ages, and in the Renaissance. Scholars nowadays continue to make use of his commentaries, not only for historical reasons but also because his suggestions are often worth considering in their own right” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).
Klebs 45.1. DiLaura, Bibliotheca Opticoria, 5. Stevenson & Guthrie, A history of oto-laryngology, pp. 14–15.
The Most Influential Book on Optics Ever Produced
6. ALHAZEN. Opticae Thesaurus…libri septem, nunc primùm editi. Eiusdem liber De Crepusculis & Nubium ascensionibus. Item Vitellonis …Libri X. Omnes instaurati, figuris illustrati & aucti, adiectis etiam in Alhazenum commentarius, a’ Federico Risner. Basileae [Basle]: per Episcopios. 1572.
2 parts in 1 volume, folio, 4 leaves (the last blank), 288 pages; 4 leaves, 474 pages, 1 leaf (blank but for printer’s device on verso). Woodcut device on title, woodcut on verso (repeated on the separate title-page to second part by Witelo), 4 woodcuts in the text (including one of the eye and one repeated from the first part) and numerous diagrams. Paper lightly foxed and pale dampstains in outer corners of last 50 leaves, otherwise a fine and clean copy. 18th century calf-backed boards (rebacked with the original spine laid down, corners renewed).
£85,000
FIRST EDITION of “the most influential optics book ever produced” (DiLaura). It “synthesized, clarified and augmented all previous work on vision, perception, reflection, and refraction of light. It gave a new intromission theory of vision, elaborated a theory of visual perception, described apparatus and procedures for measuring geometric optical properties of reflection and refraction, and presented an elaborate analysis of plane and curved mirrors” (ibid).
Written in 1028–1038 by the Egyptian Arabic scholar Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), the work was tranlated into Latin no later than 1200 as De Aspectibus. “The influence of Alhacen’s De Aspectibus was profound. Between the time of its appearance and about 1400, virtually every optics text in the Latin West either cited it explicitly or bore its influence, and all were derivative, smaller in scope, and shorter in length. By 1325 it was in use at universities. Optics texts from the advent of printing until the end of the 17th century all show the influence of the De Aspectibus. The greatest opticians of the age read and learned from Risner’s Opticae Thesaurus; Thomas Hariot, Johannes Kepler, Willebrord Snell, and René Descartes all cited the work. 100 years after its publication, Isaac Barrow cited the work in his Lectiones Opticae et Geometricae of 1674. The Opticae Thesaurus swept the field of optics, being considered by contemporaries to treat all of the then-current optics and becoming the foremost advanced optics text of the Renaissance” (ibid).
The second part is the “Ten Books of Optics” by the 13th-century Polish scholar Witelo, the earliest treatise on optics written by a European, first published in 1535. It was a redaction and augmentation of Alhazen’s De Aspectibus, and the most-used advanced text on optics in the Middle Ages.
DiLaura, Bibliotheca Opticoria, 30 and 31 for a full discussion of these works; also DSB. Dibner 138. Norman catalogue 1027.
7. ANNESLEY, William. A New System of Naval Architecture. London: Printed by W. Nicol…and sold by G. and W. Nicol,…J.M. Richardson,…and J. Booth… 1822.
4to, 2 leaves (half-title and title), pp, viii, 68, and 11 folding engraved plates (including IV.A and IV.B). 20th century half roan by De Katern in Holland, spine lettered in gilt. Fine copy.
£300
FIRST EDITION. Annesley’s system involved forming the ship’s hull with planks or boards in layers at right angles alternately, on a mould, thus doing away with frame timbers, and unlike carvel planking which is fastened to a frame. He patented it in America, where he published a description of it in 1816, and patents in Britain and France followed. He also published a description of his system in England in 1818, but the fullest and best illustrated account of it is the present work. Scott 545.
8. ARNALD DE VILLANOVA. Chymische Schrifften, darinnen begriffen I. Der Schatz aller Schätze. II. Der Philosophen Rosen-Garten. III. Das Gröste Geheimnuss aller Geheimnüssen. IV. Spiegel der Chymischen Kunst. Worbey zugleich mitangefüget V. Die edle Practica der Prophetin Mariae, Moysis Schwester. VI. Das Buch Calidis, des Sohns Jazichii, von den Geheimnüssen der Alchimie. VII. Kallid Rachaidibi, von den 3. Worten. VIII. Aristotelis Tractätlein, von der Practic des Philosophischen Steins. IX. Ludus puerorum, das Kinder-Spiel und der Weiber-Arbeit. Allen Liebhabern der wahren Alchimie zu Gefallen aus dem Latein mit höchstem Fleiss in Teutscher Sprache übersetzet, durch Johannem Hoppodamum. Franckfurt und Hamburg: In Verlegung Georg Wolffs… 1683.
Small, 8vo, pp. (xvi), 350, 1 leaf (blank). Eighteenth century half sheep, spine richly gilt in compartments, red morocco label, a fine copy. Bookplates of the Safstaholms Library and Gustaf Berndtsson.
£4800
FIRST EDITION IN GERMAN of the chemical and alchemical works by, or at least ascribed to, the Catalan physician Arnald de Villanova (c. 1240–1311), consisting of nine parts as listed on the title-page. The Latin titles of the first three works are Rosarius Philosophorum, Novum Lumen, and Flos Florum.
“Arnald, born in Aragon, Spain, was one of the great authorities among the alchemists. He devoted himself to the study of chemistry, medicine, and physics and also learned Arabic and Greek. It was through him that the full tradition of the Arabian alchemists and their theories entered the mainstream of European thought. His writings were a strange mixture of mysticism and true science, and he accepted the concept of the transmutation of the elements and modified the sulphurmercury theory of Geber” (Neville I, p. 43, note to the Opera Omnia of 1585).
VD17 39:116371H (6 copies). Not in Duveen. Ferguson (I, p. 43) lists the 1748 edition (but it is not in his Books of Secrets); these were probably the only editions of Arnald’s chemical works in any vernacular language.
9. BARBA, Alvaro Alonso. Berg-Büchlein, darinnen von der Metallen und Mineralien Generalia und Ursprung, wie auch von derselben Natur und Eigenschafft, Mannigfaltigkeit, Scheidung und Fein-machung, imgleichen allerhand Edelgesteinen, ihre Generation etc. außführlich und nutzbarlich gehandelt wird. Anfangs in Spanischer Sprache beschrieben, und in zwey Theile getheilet. Nun aber…in Teutsch übersetzet von I.L.M.C. Hamburg: Auf Gottfried Schulzens Kosten, 1676.
Small 8vo, pp. (iv), 128, 1 leaf (sub-title), pp. 129–204, (4), 1 engraved plate. Contemporary vellum, fine copy. Bookplates of the Safstaholms Library and Gustaf Berndtsson.
£3800
FIRST EDITION IN GERMAN of this celebrated treatise on mining and metallurgy, the first significant work on the subject in Spanish, and the first work on mining in the Americas.
“Barba’s work is in five books. The first (34 chapters) deals with the generation of metals and things accompanying them; the second (24 chapters) with the extraction of silver by mercury; the third (16 chapters and 13 figures) with the process he discovered in 1607 for the extraction of gold, silver and copper by boiling with salt solution and mercury in a copper vessel; the fourth (22 chapters and 48 figures) with the extraction of these metals by fusion; and the fifth (15 chapters and 13 figures) with the refining and separation of these metals” (Partington). It also includes the earliest special chapter on petroleum products (Book I, ch. 9) in Peru and elsewhere. The methods of extraction that Barba himself discovered were in large part responsible for the vast wealth that Spain gained from Peru.
Partington II, pp. 39–40. Hoover catalogue 84. The first translations out of Spanish were this German edition, and the English edition which appeared only six years earlier. Both consist of the first two Books only, and as a copy of the Spanish original had been obtained secretively by the Earl of Sandwich, it is conceivable that both were translated from that same copy.
10. BARROW, Isaac (editor). Archimedis Opera: Appollonii Pergaei Conicorum libri III. Theodosii Sphaerica: methodo nova illustrata, & succinctè demonstrata. Per Is. Barrow… Accedunt ejusdem Lectiones Opticae, & Geometricae. Londini [London]: Excudebat Guil. Godbid, voeneunt apud Rob. Scott… 1675.
2 works in 1 volume with a general title-page: The first work (Archimedes) in 3 parts, with 29 folding plates. Three leaves misbound. Lacking the leaf “Brevitatis gratia”, an explanation of mathematical symbols, which is rarely found and has clearly been excised in this copy. Tear in second L3 without loss. The second work (Barrow) in 2 parts, with 28 folding plates including one misbound in the Archimedes. The single leaf at the beginning of part 2, “Benevolo lectori”, was intended to be cancelled but is retained in this copy. Separate title-pages to each work (the second dated 1674). Light spotting and paper lightly browned. Contemporary calf (edges worn and chipped, rebacked and corners repaired, spine lettered in blind).
£3950
A rare collected issue of (1) the first edition of Barrow’s versions of, and commentaries on, the Sphere & Cylinder of Archimedes, the Conics of Apollonius, and the Spherics of Theodosius, expanded from his Lucasian lectures of 1666, and (2) a reissue of Barrow’s Lectiones XVIII (1669) and Lectiones geometricae (1670).
Barrow would have nothing to do with the printing of his lectures, and were it not for the persistence of John Collins, the optical and geometrical lectures might have remained unpublished, but they appeared edited by Collins, with revisions and corrections by Isaac Newton. Barrow’s optical lectures “formed the most advanced treatise on geometrical optics then available and would form the basis and beginning point for Newton’s own, later Optical Lectures… The analysis throughout is detailed, elaborately geometrical, and tediously complete” (DiLaura).
Not in ESTC or Wing (until June 2024 when the record ESTC R511509 was created from this copy). Archimedes: Wing A3621 and ESTC R6704. Wing does not distinguish between this issue with the general title-page and the issue containing the Archimedes alone; ESTC R6704 gives the collation for parts 1–3 only, without the Barrow; most of the many holdings listed in ESTC are probably therefore the Archimedes alone. Barrow: Wing B945 and ESTC R3609 (parts 4 and 5).
DiLaura, Bibliotheca Opticoria, 161.
11. BAUMÉ, [Antoine]. Chymie Expérimentale et Raisonnée. A Paris: Chez P. Franc. Didot le jeune, 1773.
3 volumes, 8vo, 2 leaves, pp. clx, 482, (2) blank, fine engraved frontispiece portrait and 8 folding engraved plates, and 8 pages of Théophile Barrois’ adverts inserted before the half-title; 2 leaves, 671 pages, 2 folding plates; 2 leaves, 704 pages, 2 folding plates. Half-titles, different engraved vignette on each title. Some light foxing and browning throughout. Contemporary mottled sheep, spines ruled in gilt with red and green morocco labels (ends of spines neatly repaired).
£900
FIRST EDITION, Cole’s edition A, the “best” edition with the portrait and the title vignettes signed. “One of the very latest and at the same time the best text books based on the phlogiston theory by one of the most distinguished eighteenth century French chemists” (Duveen). The plates depict chemical apparatus.
Cole 45. Duveen, p. 53. Ferguson, I, pp. 83–84. Neville I, pp. 95–96 (this edition). Partington, III, pp. 90–95.
12. BAUVE, — de. Réponse à un Écrit Anonyme au sujet d’un Nouvel Instrument de Chirurgie, propre à extraire les corps étrangers engagés dans l’oesophage, & à faire passer dans l’estomac les alimens & les médicamens liquides dans les difficultés d’avaler. A Paris: De l’Imprimerie de Laur.-Ch. d’Houry,... 1769. 8vo, pp. viii, 68, 1 folding engraved plate showing three different surgical instruments. Half-title. A few small marks, but a good copy. Modern boards. Bookplate of Richard J. Bennett.
£380
FIRST EDITION, issue with correct spacing in the author’s name and “Paris” spelled correctly. De Bauve invented an instrument for removing foreign bodies from the oesophagus. This pamphlet
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was written in reply to an anonymous pamphlet about his instrument which de Bauve describes as libellous. He also includes his reply to a favourable letter received from the surgeon Sue, and a letter from the instrument maker Duguay confirming that this instrument was made by him. The plate also shows a syringe and an aural speculum.
13. BENEDETTI, Alessandro. [Opera.] Habes lector studiose hoc volumine…singulis corporum morbis a capite ad pedes… Omnia summa diligentia excusa, atque nunc primum in lucem edita… Venetiis [Venice]: In Officina Lucaeantonii Juntae mense Augusto 1533.
Folio, pp. (xvi), 17–527. Title within allegorical woodcut border, woodcut initials, woodcut device on last page. Some browning on G1 and G8, tears in fore-edge margin of last leaf repaired from behind at an early date, otherwise a very clean copy. 18th(?) century vellum-backed boards, red paper label on spine (a little chipped), lower edge lettered in ink.
£4500
FIRST COLLECTED EDITION of the medical and anatomical works of the Renaissance physician and surgeon Alessandro Benedetti (c.1450–1512) who, in his textbook of anatomy Historia Corporis Humani (included at the end of this volume), encouraged dissection of the human body at a time when anatomists in Italy were still relying on the written word and basing their observations on the animal rather than on the human body. “This encouragement of dissection was probably Benedetti’s greatest contribution to natural science” (DSB). Also in the Historia Benedetti was the first medical writer of modern times to publish an account of the operation of rhinoplasty. He “gives fairly complete instructions for the operation of reconstruction of the nose; this was 100 years before Tagliacozzi’s work was published” (Zeis Index).
Also included in this volume is Benedetti’s treatise on the plague, published only once as a separate book (Venice, 1493), in which he considered isolation of those infected and disinfection of their clothes essential to prevent the spread of plague.
The 32 Books that comprise the greater part of this volume are his codification of diseases of various parts of the body, with individual Books being devoted to the head, the eyes, ears, nose, teeth, heart, kidneys, etc. etc.
See G&M 12771 for Benedetti’s book on anatomy, first published in 1502.
13 Benedetti
14. BERNARD OF GORDON. Practica Gordonii dicta , seu Lilium [Medicinae]. Tractatus eiusdem De Urinis. [Colophon:] Impressus Venetiis [Venice]: …mandato et expensis Octaviani Scoti…per Bonetus Locatellus… 1498.
Small folio, 2 parts in 1 volume, 96 + 33 numbered leaves (a–m8 , aa–ee6 , lacking the final blank ee6). Large and small woodcut initials, text in double columns. Intermittent minor spotting and staining but a little heavier on title and last leaf, also lower corner of gathering d, two short wormtracks in inner margin of gathering g touching a few letters. Early vellum (upper inner hinge separating, wormhole at foot of spine, some discolouring of endpapers), lettered in manuscript on spine. Provenance: ‘Cremonese’ inscribed at top of title, also an inscription partly erased, a few very brief marginal notes; bookplate of Eugene S. Flamm.
The final incunable edition, the seventh overall, of the Practica or Lilium Medicinae, the principal work of one of the medical luminaries of the Middle Ages, Bernard of Gordon (c. 1258–1318), of Scottish descent but born in France, a professor at Montpellier from 1283 to 1307. He spent his entire teaching career at Montpellier and contributed greatly to the university’s fame as the outstanding medical school in Europe. He completed the Lilium in 1305.
In the Dark Ages (476–1000), European medicine was entirely in the hands of the Jewish and Arabian physicians when the founding of the medical school at Salerno in the eleventh century began to breathe new life into medicine. The Lilium preserves the Arabic tradition but also contains much original material, and is one of the works which laid the foundations of medical literature in the fourteenth century, from the Schools of Montpellier, Paris, Bologna and Padua. It contains, inter alia, the first description of a modern truss, the first mention of spectacles (oculus berellinus), and the suggestion that muscles move due to a mechanical action of the nerves. Modern studies have been made of Bernard’s treatises on epilepsy, marasmus, smallpox and urology. The second part of this volume is Bernard’s treatise on urines, one of the few diagnostic measures available to physicians at the time.
The Lilium was translated in the Middle Ages into French (Lyon, 1495), German, Hebrew, Irish, and Spanish (Seville, 1495), but never into English, although Bernard was cited by Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales as an authority on medicine. Demaitre says of Bernard (p. 169): “It would be difficult to find a more worthy representative of Montpellier’s claim to fame, of the academic tradition, and of the medical profession around 1300 than Bernard of Gordon.”
Klebs 177.5; see also 180.1, the first separate printing of De Urinis in 1487. G&M 8369 and Stillwell, The awakening interest in science, III, 312 (first edition of 1480). Luke E. Demaitre, Doctor Bernard de Gordon: professor and practitioner (Toronto, 1980), includes a list of the 11 editions printed from 1480 to 1617.
£11,000
14 Bernard of Gordon
15. BERNARD, Claude. Sur une Nouvelle Fonction du Foie chez l’homme et les animaux. (Extrait par l’auteur.) [In:] Comptes Rendus Hebd. des séances de l’Acad. des Sciences, t. XXXI, No. 17. (21 October 1850), pp. 571–574. Paris: Bachelier, 1850.
4to, pp. 561–592. Original pink wrappers (faded), uncut, fine copy. The complete original issue of the journal, in which the paper by Bernard occupies pp. 571–574.
£550
FIRST EDITION, THE ORIGINAL JOURNAL ISSUE. Bernard made his first report on the glycogenic function of the liver in 1848 (G&M 995) in a communication to the Archives Générales de Médecine. In the present paper, two years later, he provided experimental proof that the liver produces highly complex substances, including sugar with all the characteristics of glucose, from the nutriment brought to it by the blood, which are then modified for distribution to the body, as required. These two papers formed the basis of his thesis on the subject (1853), which he used to obtain his doctorate in science.
Dibner, Heralds of science, 131.
Association Copy
16. BOEDDICKER, Otto. The Milky Way from the North Pole to 10º of south declination drawn at the Earl of Rosse’s observatory at Birr Castle. London: Longmans, Green and Co… 1892.
Large folio (18 x 23 inches or 45.7 x 58.3 cm), 2 leaves (title and preface) and 4 lithographed plates by W.H. Wesley. Inserted is a 4-page advertisement in 4to reprinting Boeddicker’s “Note to accompany a drawing of the Milky Way”. Title with photographic vignette of Birr Castle. A little foxing, blank corner of plate 1 creased. Unbound in the original blue cloth portfolio (some damp marks on inside edges, corners bumped), printed paper label on upper cover.
Provenance: Birr Castle, Ireland, seat of the fourth Earl of Rosse, but with no markings; Mealy’s auction, 30th May 2023, lot 420.
£1800
SOLE EDITION. “A most suggestive delineation of the Milky Way, completed in 1889, after five years of labour, by Dr. Otto Boeddicker, Lord Rosse’s astronomer at Parsonstown, was published by lithography in 1892. It showed a curiously intricate structure, composed of dimly luminous streams and shreds, and patches, intermixed with dark gaps and channels. Ramifications from the main trunk ran out towards the Andromeda nebula and the ‘Bee-hive’ cluster in Cancer, involved the Pleiades and Hyades, and, winding round the constellation of Orion, just attained the Swordhandle nebula” (Clerke, A Popular History of Astronomy, p., 424).
Little is known of Otto Boeddicker (1853–1937) either before he went to Birr Castle in 1880 or after he left in 1908 when Lord Rosse died. The lithographer, W.H. Wesley, was Assistant Secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society.
17. BOISTARD, Louis-Charles. Expériences sur La Main-D’Oeuvre de Différens Travaux dependans du service des ingénieurs des Ponts et Chaussées; sur l’adhérence des mortiers de sable et de ciment employés à l’air et sous l’eau; et sur l’usage des machines à épuiser. A Paris: de l’imprimerie d’A.-J. Marchant. Chez J.S. Merlin… 1804. [Bound with:] [2] GIRARD, Pierre Simon. Essai sur le Mouvement des Eaux Courantes, et la figure qu’il convient de donner aux canaux qui les contiennent. A Paris: De l’Imprimerie de La République. An XII.=1804.
2 works in 1 volume, 4to. [1:] pp. (iv), 73, (3), 1 folding letterpress table and 1 folding engraved plate. [2:] 4to, pp. vii, 60, and 1 folding engraved plate (tear across upper corner repaired from behind). Half-title. Some light foxing. Contemporary sheep, a little rubbed. Inscription on front free endpaper recording the provenance from one Benoit, engineer of the Ponts et Chaussées, and its resale in 1821 to the surveyor De Lucenay, with his stamp.
£850
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[1] FIRST EDITION. Boistard was chief engineer during the construction of the Pont de Nemours, on which he published a book in 1822, and the present work gives much detailed information on the building of this bridge as well as on other engineering projects with which he was involved. A substantial portion of the book deals with the chemistry and uses of cement, both in air and under water.
[2] FIRST EDITION of Girard’s theoretical study of the motion of water, with particular reference to the Canal de l’Ourcq, which was then being planned. An engineer from the Ponts et Chaussées, Girard accompanied Bonaparte to Egypt where he carried out important research on the level of the Nile. On his return to Paris, he was appointed director of water for Paris and directed the work on the Canal de l’Ourcq. It was this great project which led him to study the resistance of the flow of water through pipes and open channels.
18. BOLLETTI, Giuseppe Gaetano. Dell’ Origine e de’ Progressi dell’ Instituto delle Scienze di Bologna e di tutte le Academie ad esso unite, con la descrizione delle più notabili cose, che ad uso del mondo letterario nello stesso Instituto si conservano… In Bologna: nella Stamperia di Lelio dalla Volpe. 1751.
Small 8vo, 1 leaf, pp. 3–126, 1 leaf (imprimatur), and 4 folding engraved plates. Contemporary English speckled calf, red morocco label on spine (short crack at top of upper joint), a nice copy.
£800
FIRST EDITION. The history of the origins and activities of the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of Bologna, one of the leading scientific academies of the eighteenth century. It was founded as a private academy in 1690 by Eustachio Manfredi, and became the Instituto in 1712. The plates show the building in plan and elevation.
Biomechanics
19. BORELLI, Giovanni Alphonso. De Motu Animalium. Opus posthumum. Romae: Ex Typographia Angeli Bernabò. 1680 [–1681].
2 volumes, 4to, pp. (xii), 376, (11), and 18 stilted and folding engraved plates; pp. (iv), 520. Woodcut device on titles. Dampstain (mostly quite faint) in lower corner of volume 1 and upper inner corner of volume 2, a few other small dampstains, some light browning of a few gatherings (as usual with this book). Contemporary vellum, spine lettered in manuscript (but lettering rubbed and spines a bit marked), generally an excellent set.
£6500
FIRST EDITION. The foundation of the study of biomechanics. “Inspired by Harvey’s mathematical demonstration of the circulation of the blood, Borelli, a trained mathematician and physicist, conceived of the body as a machine whose phenomena could be explained entirely by the laws of physics. Borelli was the first to recognise that bones were levers powered by the action of muscle, and devoted the first volume of his work to the external motions produced by this interaction, with extensive calculations on the motor forces of muscles. The second volume treats of internal motions, such as the movements of muscles themselves, circulation, respiration, secretion, and nervous activity. Borelli was the first to explain heartbeat as a simple muscular contraction, and to ascribe its action to nervous stimulation; he was also the first to describe circulation as a simple hydraulic system” (Norman).
Borelli (1608–1779) was primarily a mathematician, one of the most distinguished pupils of Galileo, and the principal animus of the Accademia del Cimento. On the movement of animals was his most important work. In it, he analysed the movements of human and animal bodies, the flight of birds, and the swimming of fish in terms of mechanical action, of levers and fulcrums. Moreover, he realised that the action of muscle involved complex chemical processes and neurological stimulation. His study of fish swimming led him to design several types of diving apparatus, described at the end of vol. 2.
Horblit, 13. Dibner, Heralds of Science, 190. Parkinson, Breakthroughs, 1680. Lefanu, Notable medical books, pp. 90–91. G&M 762 (cardiology) and 3669.2 (probably the first measurement of masticatory force). Roberts & Trent, Bibliotheca mechanica, pp. 42–43. Fulton, History of physiology, pp. 220–222. Norman catalogue 270.
20. BOSSUT, Charles. Traité Élémentaire d’Hydrodynamique: ouvrage dans lequel la théorie et l’expérience s’éclairent ou se suppléent mutuellement; avec des notes sur plusieurs endroits qui ont parus mériter d’être approfondis. A Paris: de l’imprimerie de Chardon… 1771.
2 volumes, 8vo, 1 leaf (half-title), pp. xxxvii, (i), 394, 9 folding engraved plates; 2 leaves, 444 pages, 7 folding engraved plates. Title-pages in red and black. Paper of volume 2 slightly browned. Contemporary marbled calf (joints rubbed, slight wear to extremities), triple gilt fillet on sides, spines gilt in compartments with two red red morocco labels, gilt edges, marbled endpapers. Contemporary signature of A. Gérardouff on front endpapers (deleted in ink in vol. 2); long and neat annotations in two different hands on pp. 390 and 397.
£1250
FIRST EDITION, 1771 issue (see below). In 1768 Bossut (1730–1814), professor of mathematics at the engineering school at Mezières, was elected member of the Académie, and a chair of hydrodynamics was then created for him at the Louvre. Three years later he published the present book which went through several editions and won wide acceptance from the 1770s until until the early 19th century. Although its title was hydrodynamics, its subject matter was essentially hydraulics. “The texts of Bossut and Etienne Bézout best represent the emergence in the eighteenth century of a standardised, rigorous system of engineering physics textbooks” (DSB).
This copy was issued in 1771; unsold copies were re-issued in 1775 with new title-pages with Jombert in the imprint and an additional leaf of errata at the end of volume 1 paginated 395/6. Rouse & Ince, History of hydraulics, p. 127.
Hay Fever
21. BOSTOCK, John. Case of a Periodical Affection of the Eyes and Chest. [In:] MedicoChirurgical Transactions, vol. X, part 1, pp. 161–165. London: Printed for Longman… 1819. [And:] Of the Catarrhus Aestivus or Summer Catarrh. [In:] Medico-Chirurgical Transactions, vol. 14, pp. 437–446. London: Printed for Longman… 1828.
2 volumes, 8vo, pp. vii, 242, (1), xxiii, 435, 6 plates (1 coloured); xxiii, (i), 463, 2 folding and coloured plates. Contemporary blue half calf, some small repairs to spines, bookplates. The whole volumes are offered; Bostock’s papers occupy pp. 161–165 and 437–446 respectively in the two volumes.
£250
FIRST EDITIONS. G&M 2582: “Bostock’s classical description of the ‘catarrhus aestivus’, hay fever, is also referred to as ‘Bostock’s catarrh’. It begins the modern era in the clinical recognition of hay fever. The case he described was in fact his own. He was physician to Guy’s Hospital, London.” The second of these two papers is on the history and aetiology of hay fever, G&M 2583. Major, Classic Descriptions of Disease, pp. 618–620.
22. BOUTEILLE, Étienne Michel. Traité de la Chorée, ou danse de St. Guy. Paris: Chez Vinçard,... 1810.
8vo, pp. (vii), viii, 362, 2 leaves (contents and errata). Signed by Bouteille on the verso of the title to prevent forgery. Contemporary blue quarter morocco, fore-edges of boards rubbed and marbled paper worn from corners, but a very good copy.
£550
FIRST EDITION. The first separate treatise on chorea, or St. Vitus’ Dance. Bouteille pointed to the frequency of joint pains in people suffering from chorea. He noticed that in four of his cases arthritic rheumatism preceded the chorea, whereas in another case it followed it.
McHenry p. 406. Finger, Origins of neuroscience, p. 222.
From His Own Hospital Library
23. BREE, Robert. A Practical Inquiry on Disordered Respiration; distinguishing convulsive asthma, its specific causes, and proper indications of cure. Birmingham: Printed for the author, by M. Swinney… 1797.
8vo, pp. xvi, 420. Half-title. Library stamp on the half-title and lower corner of a few pages and an older faint stamp on title, faint dampstain in upper corner but mostly very faint, otherwise a very clean copy. Good modern half calf antique, spine gilt, red morocco label. A few marginal notes (cropped) in an early hand.
£750
FIRST EDITION. The most complete treatise on asthma that had yet appeared. Bree belongs to that select group of physicians who have written about their own condition; chronic asthma caused him to retire from practice in 1793, and he used his own case in this book. He studied the psychological factors of the disease, and “showed that attacks could be precipitated by a current situation which by association of ideas and feelings revived not only the memory but also the emotional response which accompanied the first attack, even if the patient was unaware of this connection” (Hunter & Macalpine, Three Hundred Years of Psychiatry, pp. 554–556).
Bree moved to Birmingham in 1796, and this copy belonged to the library of the hospital to which he was appointed as one of the four honorary physicians, a post from which he resigned on 18 March 1806.
The first and second editions were both printed in Birmingham and are rare, much rarer than the later editions, which were published in London.
24. BUDD, William. Typhoid Fever: its nature, mode of spreading, and prevention. London: Longmans, Green, and Co. 1873.
Large 8vo, pp. xii, (ii), 193, (1), 1 leaf (adverts), hand-coloured lithographed frontispiece and 3 lithographed plates from photographs by Budd taken in about 1859; “Note” slip with errata on verso. Original green cloth. Foxing on the tissue guard of the frontispiece, but a fine copy. Small paper shelf label at foot of spine; bookplate and small bindstamp of C.E. Turner on front endpapers; also stamp of Prof. Harold Lambert.
£850
FIRST EDITION. The first book to demonstrate the prevention of typhoid fever, and one of the great works in the literature of communicable diseases. “Budd insisted that typhoid fever was spread by contagion, and established the fact that infection from typhoid came from the dejecta of the patients” (G&M). He impressed on the medical profession and the public generally the paramount necessity of stringent modes of disinfection, the adoption of a full supply of pure water being of primary importance. This book was the culmination of his life’s work, presenting in a more complete form earlier contributions to various journals. He did the best work of his time in infectious diseases (Garrison), and was described by Professor John Tyndall as a man of the highest genius whose contributions to medical literature were “priceless”, and by Newsholme (Fifty Years of Public Health) as “one of the great pioneers in preventive medicine”.
G&M 5029. Frazer, A history of English public health, pp. 68–69.
25. CARPUE, Joseph Constantine. A History of the High Operation for the Stone, by incision above the pubis; with observations on the advantages attending it and an account of the various methods of lithotomy, from the earliest periods to the present time. London: Printed for Longman,… 1819.
8vo, pp. iv, 204, 4 engraved plates (3 large and folding, the first bound as a frontispiece and handcoloured). Two tears in inner margin of one plate repaired. Modern boards as the original, uncut and largely unopened. Presentation copy, inscribed on a blank leaf before the title: “Robt Keate Esqre from his Friend, J.C. Carpue:”; then inscribed at the top of the title: “For St Georges Hospital library from R. Keate 1836”, and with the St. George’s stamp on the title and backs of the plates.
£950
FIRST EDITION. G&M 4288. Carpue gives a history of both the lateral and the high operations, from a careful and methodical study of the literature. In the appendix he quotes everything that Franco (1556) wrote on the subject. He then gives an account of the high operation, which had become obsolete. “Carpue popularized suprapubic lithotomy, a procedure not often previously carried out” (G&M). The first plate shows a diagram of the operation, and the others are of instruments.
Robert Keate (1777–1857) was the nephew of the surgeon Thomas Keate and surgeon to St. George’s Hospital in London for forty years.
26. CASAL, Gaspar. Historia Natural, y Medica de la Principado de Asturias. Obra posthuma… En Madrid: en la oficina de Manuel Martin… 1762.
4to, pp. (xxxii), 404, (4), engraved frontispiece by Moreno of a man with a skin disease. Woodcut headpieces and initials. Contemporary limp vellum, remains of printed paper label on spine. Frontispiece dampstained, a few minor dampstains elsewhere but generally a clean and crisp copy. Bookplate of John Yudkin (1910–1995, nutritionist).
£1100
FIRST EDITION. The first recognizable description of pellagra is included on pp. 327–360 of this book, which was written in 1735 but not published until 1762, after the writer’s death.
The Natural and Medical History of the Principality of Asturias, in northern Spain, can be considered a compilation of Casal’s writings throughout his life. The work describes, among other things, the most common diseases he observed during his professional practice in the region, including scabies, asthma, leprosy, and what he called rose disease, which was later rediscovered in Italy where it was called pellagra, from ‘pelle agra’ (rough skin).
This description is the reason for his fame today: he is considered the first Spanish epidemiologist, thanks to his observation, analysis, and description of the disease. Casal rightly linked the disease to a deficient diet, the main component of which was corn, which at the time was the staple food of the region’s peasants.
In 1937 it was proven that this condition, now generally known as pellagra, is indeed caused by an insufficient intake of nicotinic acid or vitamin B3, a substance barely present in the cornbread consumed by the peasants of Asturias, as this vitamin is lost during the flour-making process. (Wikipedia, in translation).
G&M 1771 (climatic factors in medicine) and 3750 (pellagra, the second work listed). McCollum, A history of nutrition, p. 302. Pusey, History of dermatology, p. 116.
27. CAUS, Isaac de. New and Rare Inventions of Water-works; shewing the easiest ways to raise water higher than the spring. By which invention, the perpetual motion is proposed, many hard labours performed, and varieties of motions and sounds produced… First written in French by Isaac de Caus, a late famous engineer. And now translated into English by John Leak. Second edition corrected: adorned with 61 cuts. London: Printed for Thomas Shelmerdine… 1701.
Folio, pp. (vi), 34, and 26 engraved plates of hydraulic machinery. Title within double ruled border, 35 woodcut illustrations in the text. Some light soiling, short tear in B1 without loss, small and pale dampstain in margin of some leaves, a few plates printed on smaller paper and with uncut foreedges but plate IX on larger paper and fore-edge folded in but still with consequent slight loss of the engraved area (as in the NYPL copy). Contemporary panelled sheep (nicely rebacked, endpapers sometime replaced). Early signature of J.(?) Morrison at top of title, another early signature deleted in ink, armorial bookplate of Baron Barrymore.
£4250
Second edition in English, a translation using the same plates of Nouvelle invention de lever l’eau (London, 1644), which was in turn adapted from Salomon de Caus’s Les raisons des forces mouvantes avec diverses machines (Frankfurt, 1615), an important work for the development of technology and particularly that of the steam engine.
Isaac de Caus was a garden designer, architect and engineer. He was born in Dieppe about 1589, the relative, possibly the nephew, of the French garden designer and hydraulic engineer Salomon de Caus (c. 1576–1626), architect and engineer to Frederick V, Elector Palatine, in Heidelberg. Isaac de Caus was working in England by the early 1620s and in 1634 became naturalised here. He was a pioneer in the construction of life-sized automata, several of which are illustrated in this book which also includes descriptions of a fire engine, various pumps, several types of musical organs, fountains, several clocks, a lathe and a sluice. He died in Paris and was buried in 1648 in the city’s Huguenot cemetery.
This book was one of the first atlases of machinery published in England. This edition is a reissue of the 1659 edition with the same collation, plates and setting of type but with a new letterpress
27 Caus
title-page (the earlier one was engraved). It is extremely rare, with only 2 copies recorded in ESTC, both in North America; E.P. Goldschmidt had a copy in Catalogue 150, and there are no complete copies in auction records. Norman 417 (1659 edition).
28. CHARLETON, Walter. Exercitationes Pathologicae, in quibus morborum penè omnium natura, generatio, & caussae, ex novis anatomicorum inventis sedulò inquiruntur... Londini: Apud. Tho. Newcomb, 1661.
4to, pp. (xxiv), 208. Half-title. Contemporary mottled sheep, sometime rebacked, spine gilt but surface rubbed and chipped in places. Paper somewhat browned but still crisp.
£1800
FIRST EDITION. “Among Charleton’s best-known achievements was his introduction of Gassendian atomism to seventeenth-century England. The present work is a hypothetical discussion of the causes of diseases (i.e. hatred as the cause of leprosy); it also deals with the problem of abnormal embryonic development, which Charleton attempted to explain in terms of atomism, vitalism and Harvey’s theory of epigenesis” (Norman).
Wing C3673. Norman Catalogue 460. This is one of Charleton’s rarer works, and was not in the collection formed by Dr. Garth Huston and offered for sale by Jeremy Norman & Co. in 1989. This copy is the first issue, with only Thomas Newcomb’s name in the imprint, and the date on the titlepage misprinted and actually reading 2061.
Binocular Instruments
29. CHERUBIN D’ORLÉANS, Père. La Vision Parfaite: ou le concours des deux axes de la vision en un seul point de l’objet. A Paris: Chez Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, Imprimeur du Roi… 1677.
Folio, 13 leaves, 168 pages, 10 leaves, engraved title and 16 engraved plates (4 double-page or folding). Without the final blank preliminary leaf. Engraved vignette on title, in four parts with a fine and large head- and tailpiece for each part, engraved and woodcut initials. Some leaves very lightly browned, several marginal wormholes or tracks. Contemporary mottled calf (nicely rebacked preserving much of the original spine, tips of corners repaired, old scuff mark on upper cover), generally a very good and very large copy.
Provenance: Presentation copy from the author, inscribed on the front endpaper “A Monsieur le President Boileve, Donnée par l’Autheur”; bookplate of E.N. da C. Andrade; pencilled marks of E.A. Osborne at Dawsons of Pall Mall; bookplate of David L. DiLaura.
£9500 29 Cherubin d’Orléans
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FIRST EDITION, and a presentation copy, of an important and handsomely produced book on binocular vision and optical instruments by one of the outstanding 17th century instrument makers. In his book La Dioptrique Oculaire of 1671, the Capuchin Fr. Cherubin d’Orléans noted the inferiority of monocular vision and refuted the notion that that it is more useful and efficacious to use one eye. In La Vision Parfaite, Cherubin continues to insist that vision is more powerful when both eyes are used and that to this end binocular optical instruments need to permit the visual axes of the two eyes to converge to a single point on the viewed object. The book describes the first binocular microscope which is the principal subject of the book, and gives methods for the design, construction, testing, and use of binocular microscopes, telescopes, ‘binoculars’, and spectacles.
DiLaura, Bibliotheca Opticoria, 173. Clay & Court, The history of the microscope, p. 82. King, The history of the telescope, p. 57. Daumas, Scientific instruments, p. 28.
With The “Unpublished” Second Volume
30. CHEYNE, John. Essays on the Diseases of Children, with cases and dissections. Volume I. Containing Essay I. Of cynanche trachealis, or croup. Essay II. Of the bowel complaints more immediately connected with the biliary secretion. (–Vol. II. [Containing] Essay III. On hydrocephalus acutus or dropsy in the brain.) Edinburgh: Printed by and for Mundell & Son, and Longman & Rees, London. 1801 (vol. II: Printed for Mundell, Doig & Stevenson, and J. Murray, London. 1808).
2 volumes (the first in two parts), large 8vo (in 4s), 3 leaves, 72 pages, 5 hand-coloured engraved plates, 2 leaves, 80 pages, 2 hand-coloured engraved plates, 1 engraving in the text; pp. viii, (9)–218, errata slip. Lacking the final advertisement leaf. Additional title-pages to the first two essays, the second dated 1802, omitting any reference to volume 1. Faint and unobtrusive library stamp on the first title and the plates, a few other library stamps in volume 2, and a few spots, otherwise fine copies with wide margins. Good modern half calf antique, flat spines gilt, green morocco labels.
£3200
FIRST EDITIONS, and as such of exceptional rarity, as it is generally thought that volume 2 as such was never published, and that the third essay appeared separately in 1808 under its own title of An Essay on Hydrocephalus Acutus (see for instance, the Wellcome catalogue II, p. 339). However, here is evidence that the second volume was actually published; a copy in this state is in the National Library of Medicine, and a copy (without volume 1) was offered by Dawsons of Pall Mall in their Catalogue 229 (1972). There appear to be four other copies located by COPAC.
Cheyne developed a particular interest in the diseases of children and in acute and epidemic diseases, and his essay on hydrocephalus was the first description of the condition. “Cheyne’s Essay, one of the first noteworthy monographs on neuropathology to appear in the nineteenth century, contains the first description of acute hydrocephalus or basilar (tuberculous) meningitis, a disease that primarily affects children. The work was a continuation of Robert Whytt’s Observations on the dropsy in the brain (1768), in which Whytt gave the classic account of tuberculous meningitis” (Norman). Cheyne moved to Dublin in 1809, and published a second essay on the subject there in 1815.
The hand-coloured engraved and stipple-engraved plates in the first volume are of exquisite quality, six of them being from drawings by Charles Bell.
G&M 4635, the essay on hydrocephalus acutus; see also Norman catalogue 472; McHenry, History of neurology, pp. 248–249; and Abt, Pediatrics, pp. 84–85.
31. CHEYNE, John. The Pathology of the Membrane of the Larynx and Bronchia. Edinburgh: Printed by and for Mundell, Doig, and Stevenson… John Murray, and Cradock and Joy, London… 1809.
8vo, pp. iv, (iv), (9)–204, and 8 engraved plates. Unobtrusive library stamp on the plates, otherwise a fine copy. Good modern half calf antique.
£650
FIRST EDITION. G&M 3252: “Cheyne’s important book deals mainly with the lesions of croup.” Four of the plates are from drawings by Charles Bell; the others are unsigned.
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This book is actually a second edition of his essay first published in 1801 as part of his Essays on the diseases of children, under title “Of cynanche trachealis or croup”, which consisted of only 72 pages and 5 plates, but is so greatly enlarged and revised as to constitute a new work.
Abt, Pediatrics, p. 84: “…his classic.”
32. CLEOBUREY, William. A Full Account of the System of Friction, as adopted and pursued with the greatest success in cases of contracted joints and lameness, from various causes, by the late eminent surgeon, John Grosvenor, Esq. of Oxford: with observations on those cases to which it is most applicable. The third edition, considerably enlarged: with a portrait and memoir of Mr. Grosvenor. Oxford: Printed and sold by Munday and Slater... 1825.
8vo, pp. xxvi, 1 leaf, pp. 170, 1 leaf (errata and imprint), lithographed frontispiece portrait (included in the pagination) of Grosvenor by N. Whittock. Contemporary half calf, flat spine gilt with black morocco label (a little chipped, small wormhole in lower joint), brown endpapers. Faintly dampstained throughout (more noticeable on the rear endpapers) and the paper slightly wrinkled, but still a crisp copy.
£320
“John Grosvenor (1742–1823) was born at Oxford in 1742…[and] received a medical education at Worcester and the London hospitals. He became anatomical surgeon on Dr. Leo’s foundation at Christ Church, and was long the most noted practical surgeon in Oxford… He was specially successful in his treatment of stiff and diseased joints by friction” (DNB). This “third” edition may be the only edition; it is the only one in COPAC, and the only one noted by the DNB
33. CRAMER, Johann Andreas. Elements of the Art of Assaying Metals. In two parts. The first containing the theory, the second the practice of the said art. The whole deduced from the true properties and nature of fossils… Translated from the Latin… With an appendix, containing a list of the chief authors that have been published in English upon minerals and metals. London: Printed for Tho. Woodward…and C. Davis… 1741.
8vo, pp. (xii), 208, 201–470, (8) index, 6 folding engraved plates of assaying apparatus. Some light browning, pale dampstain in upper margin of the first part, and a brown offset on the title-page from a slip pasted to the free endpaper. Contemporary calf, very neatly rebacked to match, gilt centres, red morocco label, sides a little marked but a very good copy.
£900
FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH of the first textbook of assaying. Originally published in 1737 as Elementa artis docimasticae, it was a “profusely illustrated work [which] encompassed the entire art of assaying in two parts, one theoretical and one practical. In the preface he referred to the works of Agricola, Lazarus Ercker, and Stahl. All the instruments and apparatus of contemporary analytical chemistry were depicted and described exactly. In the Elementa, Cramer first described the use of the blowpipe in smelting small amounts of substances and in analyzing them. The sample was heated to glowing over charcoal, and in many cases borax beads were also utilized… In 1738 and 1739 Cramer made a long trip through England to learn more about the subject, and he gave lectures in London” (DSB).
Cole 300: “…considered one of the best works of the period on the subject.” Partington II, pp. 701–711.
Important for its Illustrations
34. CROCE, Giovanni Andrea della. Chirurgiae…Libri Septem. Quamplurimis instrumentorum imaginibus arti chirurgicae opportunis suis locis exornati, theoricam, practicam, ac verissimam experientiam continentes… Venetiis [Venice]: Apud Jordanum Zilettum, 1573.
Small folio, ff. (iv), 142, (8) including the final blank leaf. With 5 large woodcuts of surgical operations and numerous smaller woodcuts mostly of instruments, woodcut device on the title. Small repair to fore-edge margin of S3–S5, Z3–Z4 lightly browned and with minor repairs in the fore-edge margins,
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a few other leaves very lightly browned and some minor dampstains. Early (original?) paste paper boards, no free endpapers, uncut edges. ASSOCIATION COPY, inscribed at the foot of the title-page by Francesco de Bustis (“Ad usum mei Francisci de Bustis a Vidua”), a surgeon who assisted the author and is mentioned by him in this work.
£19,500
FIRST EDITION. One of the most important iconographic sources for early surgical instruments, and one of the great illustrated medical books of the sixteenth century, with about five hundred woodcuts depicting all the best known and most frequently used surgical instruments from antiquity to the time of publication, the most complete collection of surgical instruments published to date.
Three half-page illustrations show surgery of the head in progress; these are the first illustrations to show the stages of such an operation, and a typical room in which it was carried out (at home in a canopied bed with the family, servants, cats, dogs and mice all in attendance), which are the first illustrations of an operating room.
Croce improved the trephine and gave important descriptions of cranial and cerebral disease. He also gave excellent recommendations for wound management, and commented extensively on gunshot wounds. Two full-page woodcuts show operations on the battlefield. Croce was one of the most successful surgeons in Venice during the years of warfare with the Turks, who are depicted in the last full-page woodcut.
This is a very large, uncut copy, in which the woodcuts are preserved entire. In most copies the edges have been cut and the woodcuts, which extend several centimetres beyond the text, are shaved or cropped.
This is a true association copy. Francesco de Busti, called della Vidua, was an assistant surgeon or dissector to Della Croce, and is mentioned in this work (on p. 31 of the 1583 Italian edition) as one of the “most truthful witnesses” to the many dissections and operations on the cranium that Della Croce carried out “with his own hands.” For more on de Busti, see E.A. Cicogna, Delle Iscrizioni Veneziane, vol. 1, p. 337: “Un Francesco de Bustis a Vidua è registrato fra gl’incisori anatomici e fra i priori del Veneto Collegio Chirurgico dal dottor Francesco Bernardi all’anno 1584 e 1602. Questo de Bustis è pure nominato dal celebre Giannandrea Dalla Croce nella sua Chirurgia (Libro II [i.e. I], Trattato I) siccome uno di quei professori che alle sue operazioni anatomiche intervenivano.” There are ten short annotations by de Busti in the margins of this copy and one longer one.
G&M 4850.4. Walker, History of neurological surgery, pp. 18–19 and 225–227, reproducing several woodcuts. This first edition is rare, especially in an uncut state.
35. DAVID, [Jean Pierre]. Dissertation sur les effets du Mouvement et du Repos dans les Maladies Chirurgicales. Imprimé à Rouen, chez A.F. Viret: et se vend a Paris, Chez la Veuve Vaillat-La-Chapelle… 1779.
12mo, pp. xii, 164, (1) approbation. Contemporary blue marbled boards and sheep spine with black morocco label, red edges. Upper corners worn, otherwise a fine copy.
£1200
FIRST EDITION of a classic and very rare work in orthopaedics, important for showing the effect of movement and of rest in the treatment of joint conditions. David concluded “that to bring about anchylosis — to effect the union of bones — rest was beneficial, action was injurious. On the other hand, if anchylosis were to be avoided, as in injuries to the elbow or knee joints, then the opposite practice must be pursued — that of action or movement” (Keith). Even after the work of Hilton in the nineteenth century, modern surgeons came to accept the work of David.
David also described the various types of spinal deformity consequent to vertebral disease in the same year that Pott published his account. In fact David’s book includes a description of Pott’s disease, with post-mortem findings, better than Pott’s own.
G&M 4303. Bick, Source Book, p. 80. Keith, Menders of the Maimed, pp. 34 and 189–191: “… his famous essay.” Valentin, Geschichte der Orthopädie, p. 64. This was the only edition in French and the only separate edition.
36. DEASE, William. Observations on Wounds of the Head. With a particular enquiry into the parts usually affected, in those who die in consequence of such injuries. The second edition with considerable additions. To which are added some general observations on the operation of bronchotomy. Dublin: Printed by James Williams, 1778.
8vo, 2 leaves (title and dedication), pp. 5–6, 1 leaf (errata), pp. 262, 40, and 3 engraved plates (plate 1 is the frontispiece, plates 2 and 3 are on one folding sheet). First and last few leaves slightly browned and foxed. Contemporary half calf (nicely rebacked and recornered, sides a little rubbed), spine ruled in gilt and with red morocco label. Signature of Robert Draught A.B. at top of title.
£450
Second edition, and the first to be illustrated, of Dease’s first publication. Its subject matter was occasioned by the high number of head injuries with which Dease was presented and the inconsistent success in treating them. Dease was a distinguished Irish surgeon and man-midwife. He was a founder of the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland, its first professor of surgery, and its first treasurer. The first edition, which was the second Irish book on surgery and did not contain the 40-page section at the end on bronchotomy with its plates, appeared in 1776.
Early Science in Russia
37. DELISLE, Joseph Nicolas. Memoires pour servir a l’histoire & au progres de l’Astronomie, de la Geographie, & de la Physique, recueillis de plusieurs dissertations lües dans les assemblées de l’Academie Roiale des Sciences de Paris, & de celle de St. Petersbourg, qui n’ont point encore été imprimées; comme aussi de plusieurs pieces nouvelles, observations & reflexions rassemblées pendant plus de 25 années: Par M. De L’Isle… A St. Petersbourg: de l’Imprimerie de l’Academie des Sciences. 1738.
4to, pp. 284, (12), and 13 engraved plates (12 stilted, 1 folding). With 5 woodcuts in the text, woodcut initials. Contemporary calf, panelled in gilt and blind, spine gilt in compartments and with red morocco label (spine and corners neatly restored). Short worm track in lower margin and gutter of last 30 leaves, lower ruled border of 4 plates cropped (being larger than the others). Early signature of C.F. Degen (Carl Ferdinand Degen (1766–1825), Danish mathematician) on title, with an annotation in the margin of p. 144 probably in his hand; very small old stamp in lower corner of title partially erased; bookplate of Frank S. Streeter (sale at Christie’s New York, 17th April 2007, lot 145).
SOLE EDITION of one of the first books by a Western scientist to be printed in Russia.
£3800
In 1724 Peter the Great issued a decree which created the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, and the University. As Russia did not have scholars with the necessary academic qualities of university teachers, scientists from other countries were invited, among them Delisle and Daniel Bernoulli and his brother Nikolaus in 1725, and Leonhard Euler in 1727. Euler’s Mechanica was published in 1736 which was among the first major scientific works of this group to be published, with Delisle’s book appearing two years later.
In St. Petersburg Delisle was engaged in creating an observatory and in training the first generation of Russian astronomers. He was sent geodetic and cartographic information, which he published. Various physical and meteorological data came to him as well, some of the latter inspired by a ‘universal thermometer’, invented and widely distributed by him, which he describes and illustrates in this book. It also contains his and his brother’s numerous observations of aurora borealis in Russia and a record of his own early Paris observations, and experiments on light. See DSB 4, p. 23.
38. DENMAN, Thomas. A Collection of Engravings, tending to illustrate the generation and parturition of animals, and of the human species. London: Sold by J. Johnson… 1787 [but 1790].
Folio, 2 leaves, 2 pages, and 15 unnumbered engraved plates with 15 leaves of text in English and French. Foxing on title and most plates but more severe on 3 plates. Contemporary half calf (spine
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38 Denman
neatly repaired, sides rubbed), spine gilt and with red morocco label. Bookplates of Thomas Ernest Webb, and of John Studd (1940–2021) who purchased this copy from me in 1984.
£5500
FIRST EDITION of this rare suite of very fine plates. The first four show the reproductive organs of the frog, hen, and cow and the eggs of the cuttlefish, and the last eleven depict the human ovum, the foetus and uterus of women who died in childbirth, etc. Denman states that he believes several of the engravings to be the first depiction of their respective subjects.
Seven of these plates are from drawings by Jan van Rymsdyck (who did most of the drawings for Jenty’s, Smellie’s, and William Hunter’s great atlases), one of which is the last drawing he is known to have done (according to his biographer John L. Thornton). Others are by various artists, the engraving being mostly done by Skelton, and the stipple-engraving by Knight. The plates are dated variously between 1783 and 1790.
Denman used these plates again, incorporating them into the two quarto editions of his Introduction to the practice of midwifery (1801 and 1805), and they were again published separately as his Engravings, representing the Generation of Some Animals (1815).
ESTC gives two issues or editions, one with 9 plates, dated 1783 to 1787, and one with 15 plates, as in the present copy, with no copies in the British Isles.
39. DODD, George. An Historical and Explanatory Dissertation on Steam-Engines and Steam-Packets; with the evidence in full given by the most eminent engineers, mechanists, and manufacturers, to the Select Committee of the House of Commons… concluding with a narrative, by Isaac Weld, Esq. of the interesting voyage of the Thames steam-yacht from Glasgow, in Scotland, to Dublin and London. London: Published, for the author, by James Aspern, J.M. Richardson & Co…R. Ackerman… and N. Hailes… 1818.
8vo, 2 leaves (half-title and title), xxv pages, 1 leaf, 280 pages, and 3 plates (including 2 aquatints of the steam-yachts ‘Thames’ bound as a frontispiece and ‘Sons of Commerce’). Some foxing, mostly light but heavier on the plate at p. 188 and on the last few leaves, two small rubbed areas of title repaired on verso, first few leaves slightly browned. Modern half calf, uncut edges.
£400
SOLE EDITION of an early work on steam navigation. This is probably the most substantial work on the subject to date although much of it reprints the Parliamentary evidence to the Select Committee investigating steamboat boiler explosions. Dodd, who followed his father into civil engineering, was said to have been the first projector of steam boats on the Thames. By 1817 he had five steam-powered vessels in his charge, all described in this book, but after this initial success the fierce competition drove him out of the business.
The Newly Invented Telescope
40. DOMINIS, Marko Antonije. De Radiis Visus et Lucis in vitris perspectivis et iride tractatus… Per Joannem Bartolum in lucem editus. In quo inter alia ostenditur ratio instrumenti cuiusdam ad clarè videndum, quae sunt valde remota excogitati. Venetiis [Venice]: Apud Thomam Baglionum. 1611.
4to, 4 leaves, 78 pages, 1 leaf (errata). Woodcut device on title, woodcut figures in the text. Upper margin of title and A4 browned and with a small hole in A4 repaired, some light browning and spotting throughout (mainly in the margins), a few small holes in blank area of final leaf (some repaired). Old Continental boards patterned in gilt, neatly rebacked with paper. Bookplate of David L. DiLaura.
£20,000
FIRST EDITION of a very rare and important book in the early history of optics, which deals with lenses, the telescope, and the rainbow.
The first part of the book presents the basic propositions of optics and basic aspects of reflection and refraction. This lays the foundation for the first of the two principal topics of the book, the operation of lenses, which is important for giving one of the earliest accounts, probably the first, of the newly invented telescope. This instrument is also described in the preface by Giovanni Bartoli, who was the Tuscan ambassador at Venice. He was an early advocate of Galileo’s discoveries and
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his preface is the origin of the incorrect notion that it was Galileo who invented the telescope. De Dominis, whose book was printed the year after Galileo’s Siderius Nuncius and by the same printer, and with which it is sometimes bound, even suggests incorporating draw-tubes into the telescope, which came into use much later. “With the same thoroughness he examined lens combinations, in particular the combination of a convex object glass and a concave eyepiece. This work led to his discovery of the conditions under which the magnification of an image is possible” (DSB).
The second principal topic is the rainbow, in which De Dominis propounds his famous theory which greatly influenced Newton, who acknowledges De Dominis and this book in the Opticks. He held that a rainbow is caused by refraction and reflection in raindrops.
De Dominis was a Dalmation Jesuit who rose to become archbishop of Split. In 1616 he fled to England and joined the Anglican church. Later he returned to Rome where he died in a dungeon. His body, together with his writings, was burned by the Inquisition.
Cinti 33. Riccardi I, 417–418: “importantissimo libro”. DiLaura, Bibliotheca Opticoria, 55, for a full analysis. This is a rare book, with several writers alluding to its rarity over the centuries. It was placed on the Index of prohibited books and may have been suppressed or burned with its author.
41. DOUGLAS, Sir Howard. An Essay on the Principles and Construction of Military Bridges, and the passage of rivers in military operations. Second edition, containing much additional matter. London: Thomas and William Boone… 1832.
8vo, pp. (ii) half-title, vi, (iv), 417, 1 leaf, pp. 28, (12) index, stipple-engraved frontispiece and 12 folding engraved plates. Frontispiece slightly browned as in other copies. Original brown cloth (a little marked, neatly rebacked preserving the original backstrip and printed paper label), uncut. Early presentation inscription on front pastedown to C. Alanson Knight (of the family of ironmasters) of Simonsbath (Exmoor) from “J.K.”, probably a relative.
£400
Second edition of the first British work on military bridging, enlarged to twice the size of the first edition of 1816, which reportedly gave Telford the idea of the suspension principle in bridge construction. In this edition the title of the section of rope bridges was changed to “Suspension bridges of rope and iron”. The frontispiece shows a rope span as a temporary repair to the 90-foot gap in the bridge over the Tagus in 1812. The book is based largely on Douglas’s considerable experience in major European campaigns, and describes every conceivable type of bridge including pontoon bridges, flying bridges, bridges on timber or casks, suspension bridges, and bridges on trestles or piles. The first section is on hydraulics, and the last on the strength of materials.
Skempton 396.
42. DUDON, M[athieu]. Manuale dell’ Ortoiatro o l’arte di curare i piedi contenente delle ricerche pratiche su le diverse escrescenze epidermiche conosciute sotto il nome di calli, durezze, lupinelli, ed i mezzi più facili per guarirle da se stesso. Coll’ aggiunta di particolari avvertimenti su i geloni… Terza edizione notabilmente accresciuta, in italiano ridotta da G.B. Carta. Milano: Presso gli Editori. 1825.
12mo, pp. 106, (2) index, folding lithographed frontispiece of instruments. Later vellum-backed marbled boards. Some foxing, one gathering loose but still attached by sewing, but a very good copy.
£280
FIRST EDITION IN ITALIAN (?) of an exceptionally rare and quite early treatise on chiropody, which, like so much of the early literature of that subject, was based on Laforest’s L’art de soigner les pieds. The “Terza edizione” on the title-page is probably taken from the third French edition of 1824, and simply included in the translation. NUC records only two French editions, 1818 and 1824, and this Italian edition, all in one copy only.
43. DURLACHER, Lewis. A Treatise on Corns, Bunions, the Diseases of Nails, and the general management of the feet. London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co. 1845. 8vo, pp. xxiv, 196, and 6 hand-coloured lithographed plates from drawings by Alexander Durlacher. Good half calf (of the 20th century), marbled sides. Faint dampstain on the fore-edges of two gatherings, otherwise a very good copy. Bookplate of J. Colin Dagnall.
£950
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FIRST AND BEST EDITION, being the only illustrated edition and in larger format than later editions. This book gave the first description of anterior metatarsalgia (later designated Morton’s metatarsalgia), plantar digital neuritis, oncycophosis, Durlacher’s corn, etc. It placed chiropody on a scientific basis, and is, in the opinion of J.C. Dagnall, the most important book in the literature. G&M 4325. See Dagnall, “The history of chiropodial literature”, in The Chiropodist, 1965.
44. DUVERNEY, [Joseph Guichard]. A Treatise of the Organ of Hearing: containing the structure the uses, and the diseases of all the parts of the ear. Translated from the French of the late… London: Printed for Samuel Baker, 1737. 12mo, pp. (xii), 145, (1) blank, (14), 16 engraved plates of the detailed anatomy of the ear (15 folding). Paper slightly browned, ruled border of one plate cropped in the fore-edge, lower corner of four leaves slightly ragged, but a very good copy. Good modern half calf antique, spine gilt, red morocco label. Bookplate of Richard J. Bennett.
£1800
FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH. See G&M 1545 and 3351. “First scientific account of the structure, function and diseases of the ear.” It was Duverney who first suggested the theory of hearing later developed by, and accredited to, Helmholtz. The book, though comparatively short, is accurate, a model of clear exposition in both text and illustration. This English edition was translated by the surgeon John Marshall, who was probably warden of the Barbers’ Company, from the new edition which Duverney prepared in collaboration with Winslow. For a full account of this book’s content and importance, see Stevenson & Guthrie, pp. 38–39, and Politzer, History of Otology. pp. 117–124: “... a milestone in the science of otology...” Russell 293. Asherson, Bibliography, 11.
45. ELDRED, William. The Gunners Glasse. Wherein the diligent practicioner may see his defects, and may from point to point reforme and amend all errours that are commonly incident to unskilfull gunners… Approved by the authors own practice, with certain easie wayes and rules for taking of distances; never before this time published. Whereunto is annexed part of the excellent worke, published in Spanish by Diago Uffano… London: Printed by T. Forcet for Robert Boydel… 1646.
4to, pp. (xvi), 24, 21–176 [misprint for 179], (5). Woodcut portrait of the author aged 83 facing the title on A1v, title within single-ruled border, woodcut headpieces and initials, with woodcuts, diagrams and tables in the text. Small ink blot on title obscuring two words with damage repaired from behind, ink blot offset on blank area of portrait, a few headlines cut close, very faint dampstain in gatherings O and P, paper slightly browned in places. Contemporary speckled sheep (spine and corners nicely restored), unlettered. Early signature and initials of Samuel Calth(?) on title; later signature (deleted) on front free endpaper.
£3800
FIRST EDITION. “Eldred was a typical Renaissance man, skilled in both arts and sciences. A set of verses in the British Library, entitled ‘William Eldred’s Song’, satirizes all elements of society, from the king down to a beggar, and The Gunner’s Glasse, a practical manual in dialogue form between a gunner and a ‘scholler’, combines science with readability and is enlivened with occasional anecdote… The Gunner’s Glasse is perhaps the first treatise on the subject to deal specifically with ‘the naming of parts’. It concludes with an English translation of part of Diego Ufano’s Tratado dela artilleria, published in Spanish in 1612 and shortly thereafter in several other European languages. Eldred, who knew French and Latin, may himself have translated this from the French” (ODNB). Eldred was a master gunner of Dover Castle who was also responsible for the maintenance of the castle. He was commissioned to prepare a survey of the castle, the town and harbour. He died in the year his book was published, or shortly thereafter. Wing E331. This was the only edition.
46. [EMERSON, William.] A Short Comment on Sir I. Newton’s Principia. Containing notes upon some difficult places of that excellent book. London: Printed for J. Nourse… 1770. 8vo, pp. iv, 5–157, (1) errata, (2) adverts for Emerson’s ten-volume Cyclomathesis, and 5 stilted engraved plates. Contemporary reversed calf, red and green morocco labels on spine, marbled
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endpapers, a lovely copy. Bookplate of Lord Sandys (Edwin Sandys, second Baron Sandys of Ombersley, 1726–1797).
£850
FIRST EDITION. “Besides his comments on the Principia, the author defends Newton against objections made to several parts of that work, comments on the Opticks and defends Newton’s Chronology” (Babson 55). Emerson was a mathematician and instrument-maker, who, although an unsuccessful teacher, “wrote textbooks on trigonometry, mechanics, arithmetic, geometry, finite differences, algebra, optics, astronomy, geography, and surveying, most of which were bestsellers” (ODNB).
Earliest Extant Treatise on Optics
47. EUCLID. Eukleidou Optika kai katoptrika [in Greek] Optica & Catoptrica, nunquam antehac Graece aedita. Eadem Latine reddita per Ioannem Penam… Parisiis: Apud Andream Wechelum… 1557.
2 parts in 1 volume, 4to, pp. (xx), 48; (iv), 64. The text of the first part is printed in Greek. Woodcut device on titles (the second much larger), woodcut headpieces and initials, diagrams in the text, a copy with generous margins, lightly ruled in red throughout. Some light browning, last page dust-soiled and with a repair to the upper inner corner just touching one letter. 20th century marbled boards with vellum spine, red morocco label. Some early marginalia in Latin and Greek; old manuscript note in Greek on flyleaf; bookplate of David L. DiLaura.
£4950
FIRST SEPARATE EDITION and the editio princeps of Euclid’s Optica and Catoptrica, in Greek with their Latin translations. The Optica is the earliest surviving text on optics and light in the western world.
“The Optica presents the phenomena of visible light and the Euclidian idea of vision rays emanating from the eye, comfortably aligned with and analyzed by geometry. It re-emerged as an important text in the 15th century for its use in the theory of linear perspective. The Catoptrica, a treatise on mirrors attributed by Proclus to Euclid, covers the mathematical theory of mirrors, particularly the images formed by plane and spherical concave mirrors” (DiLaura).
The Optica remained the only work on the subject until Ptolemy’s. It is here translated and edited by Jean Pena, professor of mathematics at Paris and former student of Peter Ramus. “Pena sought to completely and accurately present the whole of the optical and vision teaching of Euclid, in part as a balance to what he considered the uncritical acceptance of Witelo and Peckham common at that time… Pena presents the Euclidian work on the geometrical optics of vision and mirrors and even more influentially, includes the preface De Usu Optices — ‘The Use of Optics’— for which Pena’s book became famous. In it, he summarized optical principles including refraction, and claimed that practical astronomical knowledge and optical laws demonstrated that Aristotle’s celestial spheres could not exist” (ibid).
DiLaura, Bibliotheca Opticoria, 26.
48. EUCLID. La Prospettiva di Euclide, nella quale si tratta di quelle cose, che per raggi diritti si veggono: & di quelle, che con raggi reflessi nelli specchi appariscono. Tradotta dal R.P.M. Egnatio Danti… Con alcune sue annotationi de’ luoghi piu importanti. Insieme con La Prospettiva di Eliodoro Larisseo cavata della Libreria Vaticana, e tradotta dal medesimo nuovamente data in luce. In Fiorenza [Florence]: Nella Stamperia de’ Giunti, 1573.
3 parts in 1 volume with continuous signatures, 4to, pp. (viii), 110, (2) blank but for ornament on verso; (16); (18). Without the final blank leaf. Separate title-pages to the second and third parts, the third part printed in double columns with Greek and Latin text. Woodcut vignette on title, woodcut diagrams and ornaments in the text. Some light foxing, small piece torn from lower margin of O4. 19th century red half morocco, marbled sides and endpapers (a few small holes in marbling of upper cover, tips of upper corners worn). Old and unobtrusive library stamp at foot of title, bookplate of David L. DiLaura.
£3800
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First edition of Egnazio Danti’s annotated translation of Euclid’s Optica and Catoptrica, the first vernacular and the only sixteenth-century Italian edition. To these is appended the first publication of the Capita opticorum of Heliodorus of Larissa, in an Italian translation followed by the Greek editio princeps and a Latin translation.
Euclid’s Optica, an elementary treatise on perspective, was the first Greek work on the subject. The Catoptrica, on mirrors, is actually not by Euclid but is probably the work of Theon. Riccardi (I, 391) regards this edition as valuable for the commentary by Danti, who was cosmographer at the court of Cosimo I in Florence.
The Capita opticorum of the second-century Greek mathematician Heliodorus is a commentary on, and abridgement of, Euclid’s optics, Ptolemy’s optics, and Theon’s recension of Euclid. It appears in print here for the first time, and is his only known work. “It is important for its allusions to various ancient sources and for giving information on optics as generally understood at the time” (DiLaura).
DiLaura, Bibliotheca Opticoria, 32 and 33.
49. FABRIZIO, Girolamo (FABRICIUS AB AQUAPENDENTE). De Integumentis
Animalium Libellus: Friderico Monavio…producente. In Monte Regio [Königsberg]: Typographéo Reusneriano, 1642.
4to, 6 leaves, 38 [i.e. 58] pages, 1 leaf. Dampstain on first and last few leaves and faintly in fore-edge margin almost throughout, several gatherings lightly browned. Modern limp vellum, cloth ties.
£650
Second edition, issue without Martin Hallervord’s name in the imprint, of Fabrizio’s book on the comparative anatomy of the skin. This edition was edited by Friedrich von Monau of the Prussian Academy.
“In the skin (1618) he distinguishes between dermis and epidermis, and devotes his attention to the products of the latter, such as the hairs, bristles and spines of terrestrial animals, feather of birds, scales of reptiles and fish, wings of insects… He concluded that the ‘cornea’ of the eye of the serpent was a modified part of the skin, since it was shed with the rest of the epidermis” (Cole, History of comparative anatomy, p. 106).
Independent editions of Fabrizio are hard to find; VD17 finds one copy of each of the two issues, and no copy of the first edition of 1618, although Cole (377) had a copy.
50. FAIRBAIRN, William. On the Application of Cast and Wrought Iron to Building Purposes. London: John Weale… 1854.
8vo, pp. viii, 183, + 16 pages of Weale’s adverts dated 1853 inserted at the end, folding lithographed and tinted frontispiece, 2 folding lithographed plates, folding letterpress table, errata slip. With 62 woodcut figures in the text. Original blue cloth (a little faded and bubbled by damp at top, very neatly rebacked retaining the original backstrip), yellow endpapers, uncut. Minor spotting on the plates and paper very slightly browned. Neat early inscription on front free endpaper.
£480
FIRST EDITION of a key work in the development of the use of iron in building. Fairbairn collected together all the known information on the strength and optimum form of cast and wrought iron, including his own experiments incorporated into the design of the Britannia and Conway tubular bridges, which had been the subject of his second book in 1849. Of particular importance are his tests on cast iron beams trussed with wrought iron, which failed spectacularly when Stephenson’s Dee bridge at Chester collapsed in 1847.
The first part of the book is on cast iron beams, the second part on wrought iron beams, and the third part is on the design and construction of fireproof mills and warehouses, concluding with a description of the mill at Saltaire, illustrated in the fine frontispiece.
Roberts & Trent p. 112.
51. FALKIRK IRON COMPANY LTD. Album of 56 photographs depicting the production of munitions during the First World War. Falkirk: [c. 1918].
Oblong 4to (230 x 270 mm), with 56 silver gelatin prints each 144 x 195 mm (7.8 x 5.8 inches) mounted one to a page on thick green card, each captioned with the name of the product and
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the process depicted. Original half green morocco (spine neatly relaid, lower cover marked, inner hinges throughout reinforced with modern adhesive tape), titled in gilt on upper cover: “Munition Work Record. The Falkirk Iron Coy, Ltd, 1915—1918”.
Provenance: signature inside front cover of Miss J. W. Alexander with her address in Falkirk, and with a photo postcard depicting a group of gentlemen all of whom in August 1918 had been employed in the company’s service for 50 years or more.
£1800
A good album of photographs of the interior of a large Scottish munitions factory depicting the workers going about their daily work at every stage of production, not posing for the camera except for pausing for the shot. The images therefore have an atmospheric realism, lit by natural light from above, showing all the details of an ironworks in daily production. One image is a general view of the machine shop which was quite large, and the noise must have been deafening.
With so many men away in the armed services, it is not surprising that women feature strongly among the workers, and no fewer than 34 images include female workers.
Products made by this company during the period include some 2.5 million grenades of several kinds, aerial and howitzer bombs, chemical (i.e. mustard gas?) and other shells, fuses, etc.
The Falkirk Iron Co. was established in 1819 as a Joint Stock Company, having its origins in the Falkirk Foundry Co. which was set up in 1810. The company made cast stoves, kitchenware, engine parts, pillar-boxes, structural castings, ornamental items, etc. etc. but was clearly required to produce munitions during the First World War, as it had been during the Crimean War.
The catalogue of the Imperial War Museum in London does not record any photographs of munitions factories taken before the First World War; it has some 450 photographs taken during it but none of the Falkirk Iron Company.
Vaccination in Italy
52. FANZAGO, Francesco [Luigi]. Memoria Storica e Ragionata sopra l’Innesto del Vajuolo Vaccino. In Padova [Padua]: [no printer or publisher, 1801]. [Bound with:]
[2.] ODIER, L[ouis]. Memoria sopra l’Inoculazione della Vaccina in Ginevra... Tradotta dal Francese con aggiunte concernenti i successi della vaccina. In Padova [Padua]: [no printer or publisher], 1801. [And with:]
[3.] SACCO, Luigi. Osservazioni pratiche sull’ uso del Vajuolo Vaccino come preservativo del Vajuolo Umano. Edizione II. Padova [Padua]: A spese di Pietro Brandolese, 1801.
3 works in 1 volume, 8vo, 74 pages, 1 leaf (blank); pp. viii, 46, 1 leaf (blank); 174 pages, 1 leaf (blank), 2 engraved plates on 1 folding sheet. Contemporary sheep-backed boards, label missing from spine but fine copies.
£600
Three of the earliest Italian works on vaccination. Jenner’s Inquiry was published in Italian in 1800.
[1.] FIRST EDITION. Fanzago was professor of pathology at the University of Padua.
[2.] FIRST EDITION IN ITALIAN. Odier was responsible for first publishing the Inquiry in French, and perhaps also for adopting the term “vaccination”.
[3.] Second edition in the same year as the first. Sacco was the first writer on vaccination in Italy, and the present book preceded his larger Trattato di vaccinazione by eight years. The plate was reproduced in his later book in a coloured version. He was director of vaccination in Lombardy, and was largely responsible for the success of vaccination in Italy.
Burning Glasses
53. FINÉ, Oronce. De Speculo Ustorio, ignem ad propositam distantiam generante, liber unicus… Lutetiae [Paris]: Ex officina Michaelis Vascosani… 1551.
4to, 25 leaves. Without the final blank leaf. Woodcut initials, and 33 woodcut diagrams in the text. Text faintly ruled in red. Paper slightly browned but a crisp copy with generous margins. Modern French marbled boards and red morocco spine. With early annotations in the margins of 12 pages, extensive on the first 8 (with some trimmed). Bookplate of David L. DiLaura.
£2400
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FIRST EDITION. A rare treatise on burning glasses or concave mirrors, which includes mathematical analyses and methods of their construction. Such mirrors were used in metallurgy and in assaying. Finé’s principal sources were Witelo’s Perspectiva and Alhazen’s recent De Speculis Comburentibus (1548), and although the book is not composed of original material, it is a carefully crafted compilation comprising a much needed textbook on catoptrics. “It was the first such book printed in France, and…esteemed for its careful presentation, straightforward Latin, and the excellence of its figures” (DiLaura). DiLaura, Bibliotheca Opticoria, 21. Norman catalogue 796.
54. FLOURENS, P[ierre]. Théorie Expérimentale de la Formation des Os. Paris: Chez J.B. Baillière, 1847.
8vo, pp. viii, 164, 7 folding engraved plates of the structure of bones (1 partly hand-coloured). With the half-title, small signature dated 1862 and blind stamp on title. Some foxing. Original printed wrappers, uncut and unopened.
£320
FIRST EDITION of Flourens’ second book on the subject of the formation of bone, in which he proposes and offers demonstrable proof of his theory of resorption, recounts his experiments using madder to dye bones, discusses earlier theories, and for the first time attempts the problem of the relation between between force and matter in the living body. Flourens had already demonstrated the rôle of the periosteum in the growth of bone.
55. FOURCROY, [Antoine François] de, and [Jean Jacques] DELAPORTE. Analyse Chimique de l’Eau Sulfureuse d’Enghien, pour servir a l’histoire des eaux sulfureuses en général. A Paris: Chez Cuchet… 1788.
8vo, 2 leaves, pp. (vii)–xx, 385, (1). Half-title, woodcut head- and tailpiece. Contemporary sheepbacked boards, flat spine gilt with red morocco label (upper joint cracked and a little loose, short crack at top of lower joint, head of spine worn, label chipped). Library stamp on half-title, faintly on the title, and lower corner of a few other pages.
£400
FIRST EDITION. At the behest of the Faculty of Medicine, and “with the collaboration of Delaporte (of the Royal Society of Medicine) Fourcroy made very detailed analyses of the waters of Enghien, in the valley of Montmorency, and a large quantity was brought to Paris for further study. A full account of these waters was read by Fourcroy at ten successive meetings of the society and subsequently published in the present book… A balneological and analytical chemical classic, which is ‘entirely chemical in content’ (Duveen)” (Neville). As a result of this analysis the waters were recommended for various ailments, and Enghien developed into a fashionable resort.
The book includes two further studies, on the waters of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (by Chappon), and Vaugirard.
Cole 486. Duveen p. 225. Neville I, p. 474. Smeaton, Fourcroy, pp. 21–22 and 115–117 for a full account of this highly detailed book; bibliography no. 30.
56. FRANKLIN, Rosalind E. and R.G. GOSLING. Evidence for 2-Chain Helix in Crystalline Structure of Sodium Deoxyribonucleate. Reprinted from Nature, vol. 172, p. 156, July 25, 1953.
8vo, 5 pages (the last verso blank). With 4 figures in the text. Signed in the upper right corner of the first page by R.G. Gosling.
£4500
OFFPRINT, signed by one of the authors, of Franklin and Gosling’s second and final paper on the structure of DNA, demonstrating the correctness of Watson & Crick’s model.
Rosalind Franklin, working on X-ray crystallography, and her co-worker Raymond Gosling, then a research student, played a crucial role in the discovery of the structure of DNA when Maurice Wilkins showed James Watson a photograph taken by Franklin of the DNA molecule, from which Watson and Crick knew that it was helical.
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“In Franklin’s draft [for her first paper published in April 1953], it is deduced that the phosphate groups of the backbone lie, as she had long thought, on the outside of the two coaxial helical strands whose configuration is specified, with the bases arranged on the inside. Her notebooks show that she had already formed the notion of interchangeability of the two purine bases with each other, and also of the two pyrimidines. The step from base interchangeability to the specific base pairing postulated by Crick and Watson is a large one, but there is little doubt that she was poised to make it. The notebooks also show that she had grasped that the A form contained two chains or strands which ran in opposite directions, but had not understood the exact relation between the two forms, namely that the A form is a somewhat more tightly wound form of the B double helix in which the bases change their tilt direction considerably, thus obscuring the helical structure underlying the A form X-ray pattern. In a second paper to Nature in July 1953 Franklin and Gosling showed this conclusively, and indeed this paper stands as the first analytical demonstration of the correctness of the Watson–Crick model” (ODNB).
57. FREER, George. Observations on Aneurism, and some diseases of the arterial system. Birmingham: Printed by Knott & Lloyd… 1807.
4to, pp. viii, 116, directions to binder slip at the end, and 5 engraved plates (4 hand-coloured) by Eginton from drawings by Hodgson. Half-title, 1 small woodcut on p. 112. Paper very slightly browned in the margins, small stain on p. 53. Contemporary tree calf, rebacked with gilt centres and new red morocco label (corners repaired, fore- and lower edges chipped), small armorial device in gilt on upper cover. PRESENTATION COPY, inscribed on the half-title: “Joseph Yates Esqr. from the Author”; beneath in another hand “St. George’s Hosp. Library” and with two old library stamps on title and one on the last page.
£1800
SOLE EDITION. A very rare, important, and practically unknown work, with engraved plates from drawings by Freer’s apprentice at Birmingham, Joseph Hodgson, whose illustrations for his own work on the same subject published in 1815 (in which he described “Hodgson’s disease”) are described as the best illustrations of aneurysms published to date.
Freer gives a valuable account of the diseases of the arteries, and describes in detail the case of J. M’Donald on whom Freer operated for a large aneurysm of the femoral artery. Freer had not seen Scarpa’s classic work on aneurysm (1804) when he claimed in this book that his ligation of the iliac artery in that case was “the first case on record, wherein this operation completely succeeded” (p. 79).
58. GALÈS, Jean-Chrysanthe. Mémoire et Rapports sur les Fumigations Sulfureuses appliquées au traitement des Affections Cutanées et de plusieurs autres maladies. Imprimés par ordre du gouvernement. A Paris: de l’Imprimerie Royale. 1816. 8vo, 2 leaves (half-title and title), 141 pages, and 11 folding engraved plates (including 8 printed in sepia). 19th century quarter calf and marb led boards (nicely rebacked, ruled in blind, unlettered), vellum tips.
£800
FIRST EDITION, issue with 141 pages and 11 plates (see below). Galès, who was the pharmacist at the Hôpital St. Louis, the famous skin hospital in Paris, developed a method of treating scabies and other skin disorders by means of fumigations with sulphur vapours. Seven of the first eight plates show front and back views of patients with various skin disorders (the eighth shows a side view). The book was printed at the order of the government; Galès was renowned at the time for his “discovery” of the scabies mite four years earlier, which was later shown to be fraudulent, but that was not until 1829. The reports at the end are by Richerand, Pinel, Dupuytren, and others. See Crissey & Parrish pp. 61–68.
Another issue has 137 pages and either 7 or 8 plates; the additional text and plates in the present copy, numbered I–III, are of fumigation apparatus with their explanations. Yet another issue has a dedication but no half-title, ‘chez l’auteur’ in the imprint, 137 pages and 11 plates, of which 8 are coloured, and the descriptions of the last three are on pages numbered (1)–4.
59. GALILEI, Galileo. Galileo a Madama Cristina di Lorena (1615). Padova [Padua]: Tipogr. Salmin, 1896 [Colophon: May 1897].
19mm. x 12mm. (page size), 1 leaf (woodcut portrait of Galileo), pp. 205, (2). The imprint is on the verso of the title. Contemporary vellum, decorated and lettered on the spine in black.
£2500
First published in 1636 (outside Italy and twenty-one years after it was written) as the NovAntiqua, this letter to Cristina, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, is Galileo’s argument for the freedom of science from theological interference. It is “a superb manifesto of the freedom of thought… Its purpose was to silence all theological objections to Copernicus. Its result was the precise opposite: it became the principal cause of the prohibition of Copernicus, and of Galileo’s downfall” (Koestler). Galileo argued “that neither the Bible nor nature could speak falsely, and that the investigation of nature was the province of the scientist, while the reconciliation of scientific facts with the language of the Bible was that of the theologian” (DSB). The year after it was written Copernicus’s De revolutionibus was placed on the Index of forbidden books, and Galileo was himself summoned before the Inquisition.
This tiny book is one of the most famous miniature books in existence, and probably the smallest printed scientific book. At one time it was the smallest book printed with movable type. It is set in the exceedingly small “occhio di mosca” (fly’s eye) Dantino type created by the Salmin press for their complete edition of Dante.
Welsh, A bibliography of miniature books, 2935. Spielmann, Catalogue of the library of miniature books, 161. Bondy, Miniature books, pp. 95–96. Not in Cinti.
60. GOODALL, Charles. The Colledge of Physicians Vindicated, and the true state of physick in this nation faithfully represented: in answer to a scandalous pamphlet, entituled, The Corner Stone, &c. [by Adrian Huyberts]. London: Printed by R.N. for Walter Kettilby… 1676.
8vo, 8 leaves (including the initial blank), 191 pages, 4 leaves (including the final blank). With the imprimatur leaf before the title, title within single ruled border, typographical ornaments. Contemporary mottled calf (rebacked in the last century). Paper very lightly browned, old repair to front pastedown, but a very good copy. 18th century signature of John Bayly on recto of imprimatur.
£1200
FIRST EDITION of an uncommon book. “When the Royal College of Physicians confronted a group of medical chemists, Goodall replied to one of the chemists’ works in The Colledge of Physicians Vindicated (1676), dedicated to Sir Francis North, lord chief justice of the common pleas. In it Goodall made a strong case for the legality of the college’s jurisdiction, and the usefulness of that power” (ODNB). The book proved three points: that the College of Physicians was legally established, that it exercised its rights justly, and that it had advanced medical learning in England. The illustrations in support of the last show Goodall to have been well read in the science of his time. His reward was to be admitted to the College in the same year and he became president in 1708 until his death.
Wing G1090. Gibson, Francis Bacon, A Bibliography, 410; this book contains two quotes from Bacon.
61. GREAT EXHIBITION. Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations, 1851. Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue. In three volumes. [And:] Supplementary Volume. London: Spicer Brothers…; W. Clowes and Sons, Printers; contractors to the Royal Commission. 1851 [–1852].
4 volumes, large 8vo, pp. cxcii, 208, 193*–208*, 209–478, 465*–478*, lithographed title and 28 plates (including 3 folding, a folding coloured map and a folding coloured chart); pp. (iv), 479–1002, and 103 plates (including 6 coloured and 1 folding); pp. (iv), 1003–1470, and 153 plates (including 1 folding). Supplementary Volume: pp. xviii, (ii), (1471)–1532, liv, 211, (1 blank), 76, and 129 plates (including 3 folding, 5 double-page and 1 folding coloured chart). Contemporary blindstamped calf (extremities rubbed, head of two spines a little worn, scuff marks on sides, short split at foot of one
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upper joint), spines with two red morocco labels and gilt centres, marbled endpapers, red edges. Armorial bookplate of Lionel Ames in each volume.
£2250
FIRST EDITION of the complete record of the exhibits, exhibitors and prize winners of the Great Exhibition of 1851, and hence an essential source of information on the industry and industrial arts in the mid-nineteenth century, illustrated with nearly 1000 plates and woodcuts in the text. The first volume deals with the sections on Raw Materials and Machinery, and the second volume on Manufactured Goods and Fine Arts. This volume also records exhibits from the British Colonies while the third volume includes foreign exhibits. The Commissioners wanted to issue the Official Catalogue before the Exhibition closed, thus omitting many illustrations and important descriptions of late entries. The Supplementary Volume, which is often not present, was published to include omissions and to fully include India’s contribution. It also includes the First and Second Reports of the Juries.
Modern Surgery
An English Copy
62. GUY DE CHAULIAC. Cyrurgia Guidonis de Cauliaco. De balneis porectanis. Cyrurgia Bruni. Theodorici. Rolandi. Rogerii. Lanfranci. Bertapalie. Jesu Hali de oculis. Canamusali de Baldac de oculis. Venetiis [Venice]: Impressus (impensis dni. Andree Toresani de Asula) per Simonem de Luere, 23 December 1499.
Small folio, 270 leaves (the last leaf unnumbered). Small woodcut diagrams of instruments on f. 209a and b. Some extensive marginal notes in an early English hand. Title-page remargined in inner margin, following leaf with neat repairs to corners, front free endpaper and f. 8 (evidently once loose) with neat marginal repairs, small and diminishing wormhole in text of first 7 leaves, first 2 leaves a little soiled, some small stains in margins. Contemporary English blindstamped calf over wooden boards (rebacked and corners restored) by Oldham’s W.G.-I.G binder, sides diapered with fleurs-de-lys in compartments (Oldham 30, p. X), frame of quatre-foil roll (Oldham DI.a(9), pl. XXXIX), catchplates on fore-edges (straps missing), evidence of a former chain staple at foot of rear cover (repaired).
Provenance: in an English binding and with notes in an English hand, this copy was clearly in use in Britain at an early date. Signature of Godman on front free endpaper; also another signature in an early hand; 17th(?) century signature of Lud. Vaughan on title with the motto Vive ut Vivas, possibly indicating a Welsh family; 18th century signature of J. Burns (?) in several places; bookplates of Arthur E. Lyons and Eugene S. Flamm.
£38,000
This wonderful collection includes the second edition in Latin of the Chirurgia Magna of Guy de Chauliac, the 2-page Recepta aquae balnei de Porrecta edited by Tura de Castello, the Chirurgia magna and Chirurgia minor of Bruno da Longoburgo, the Chirurgia of Theodoric (see G&M 5555.1), the Cyrurgia of Roland of Parma (see G&M 5551), the Practica chirurgia of Roger of Palermo (see G&M 5551, Darember’s definitive edition), the Cyrurgia parva and Chirurgia magna of Lanfranc of Milan (see G&M 5553), the Chirurgia of Leonardo Bertapalia, and the De oculis of Jesu Haly Abbas and Tractatus de oculis of Canamusali, both here in first edition.
Modern surgery begins with Guy de Chauliac (c.1298–1368), “the most eminent surgeon of his time; his authority remained for some 200 years. He distinguished the various kinds of hernia from variocele, hydrocele and sarcocele, and described an operation for the radical cure of hernia. The book, which [as the first line of text in this edition tells us] was originally written in 1363, includes his views on fractures, and gives an excellent summary of the dentistry of the period. It is the greatest surgical text of the time” (G&M).
All of these works were originally written between the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries, and comprise some of the earliest surgical works of modern times, including the earliest writing on surgery in the West, that of Roger of Parma, which formed the real basis of medieval surgery of Italy (Baas, p. 299). They also include both books of Lanfranc, the founder of French surgery. Most of them were first published in this collection the previous year. This is an exceptional copy in its original binding.
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62 Guy de Chauliac
Klebs 494.2. For Guy de Chauliac’s Chirurgia see G&M 5556 and Printing and the Mind of Man 21, the first edition, in French, of 1478. It is not surprising that Guy’s book did not appear in Latin until 1498 and had appeared earlier in three vernacular languages, as Latin was not the language of the surgeon at that time.
Chlorine as a Disinfectant
63. GUYTON DE MORVEAU, Louis Bernard. Traité des Moyens de Désinfecter l’Air, de prévenir la contagion, et d’en arrêter les progrès. A Paris: Chez Bernard… An IX. — 1801. 8vo, pp. xxxii, 304, + 8 pages of Bernard’s advertisements at the end. Contemporary marbled boards, sheep spine ruled in gilt, red morocco label. Half-title. Very faint dampstain on last few leaves, a fine copy.
£450
FIRST EDITION. Guyton did important pioneering research on the disinfection of air, having been consulted about the problem of putrid emanations from corpses in the crypt of a church in Dijon. Believing that the decaying flesh gave off both ammonia and the disease-carrying particles, he first used hydrochloric acid fumes, while in England Sir James Carmichael Smyth independently used nitric acid fumes. Guyton subsequently made the investigations described in this book, and then used chlorine, which he found to be an effective disinfectant. A simple apparatus for producing chlorine from common salt was also described in this book, which was translated into five languages. For this service to humanity he was admitted to the Legion of Honour in 1805, while in England Smyth was awarded a grant of £5000.
DSB V, p. 603. Cole 573. Duveen p. 276. Neville I, pp. 562–563. The collation of this copy agrees with Duveen, and has 304 pages + 8 pages of advertisements at the end; some copies (e.g. Neville) have 306 pages, the extra leaf being a singleton, V1, advertising Guyton’s books, while others have neither the single leaf nor the 8 pages.
Invention of the Quadrant, Precursor to the Sextant
64. [HADLEY George.] A Description of a New Instrument, invented by John Hadley, Esq; for taking Latitude or other altitudes at sea. With directions for its use. The instruments are sold by Jonathan Sisson… [and others]. London: Printed by T. Wood, and sold by A. Nutt… 1734.
Small 8vo in 4s, 30 pages, 1 folding engraved plate of the instrument (shaved at top with very slight loss). Blue sugar-paper wrappers. Title trimmed shorter at fore-edge touching two letters and losing one letter in the imprint (other leaves are not similarly trimmed), otherwise a fine copy.
£1600
FIRST EDITION. The first important consequence of the prize offered for finding longitude at sea.
“It was not until 1730 that there appeared a new instrument that, because of its greater accuracy, revolutionised nautical astronomy. This was the reflecting quadrant, so called because it employed mirrors to observe the altitude of celestial bodies. It is clear from all the early accounts that this device was invented not in an attempt to improve observations for latitude or local time, but specifically for making the precise measurements required for finding longitude by the lunardistance method… When the advantages of its greater accuracy and ease of use over both the crossstaff and the backstaff became apparent, it was quickly adopted by mariners as an instrument for finding latitude, and was also used for finding local time by the equal-altitude method” (Andrewes, The quest for longitude, pp. 81–2 and 401–3).
The arc of the instrument was one-eighth of a circle, hence the name octant, but the instrument could measure 90°or a quarter of a circle and hence be called a quadrant. In 1757 Captain John Campbell enlarged Hadley’s octant to a sixth of a circle, so that it could measure up to 120°, thereby creating the sextant.
This work is generally ascribed to George Hadley, John Hadley’s brother. There were later editions in 1738 and 1748, and all are rare; ESTC records 2 copies of this first edition. Hadley published a paper on his instrument in the Philosophical Transactions in 1731 but the ESTC does not record a separate issue of it. Taylor, Hanoverian, 55 (giving the date of the second edition); see also 56.
65. HARVEY, William. Exercitationes de Generatione Animalium. Quibus accedunt quaedam De Partu: de membranis ac humoribus uteri: & de conceptione. Londoni: Typis Du-Gardianis; impensis Octaviani Pulleyn… 1651.
4to, 15 leaves, pp. 301, (1), 1 leaf (blank). With the fine allegorical frontispiece and the two blank leaves C4 (intended to be cancelled) and Ss4 but lacking the first blank leaf. Woodcut headpieces and initials. Contemporary sheep, spine and corners neatly repaired, spine lettered in gilt, (later(?) gilt fillet on sides and lettering on spine rubbed and partly missing. The frontispiece, usually shaved at the bottom as it is larger than the book, is here intact at the bottom but very slightly shaved at the lower fore-edge corner, and is slightly browned. Signature of J. Braxton Hicks (1823–1897), distinguished London physician and obstetrician, on front pastedown; 19th century presentation label from him to the Birmingham Medical Institute on free endpaper, and their gilt stamp (rubbed) on the spine.
£7500
FIRST EDITION. G&M 467 and 6146: “The most important book on the subject to appear during the seventeenth century.” Harvey was among the first to disbelieve the erroneous doctrine of the preformation of the foetus. The motto of the frontispiece “Ex ovo omnia” epitomised his theory of the mammalian ovum, a theory not proven until von Baer’s discovery in 1827. Even if Harvey had not discovered the circulation of the blood, his work on embryology would have placed him among the greatest of biological scientists. The chapter on labour, De Partu, is the first original work on obstetrics to be published by an Englishman. Wing H1091. Keynes 34. Russell, British Anatomy, 375. Needham, History of Embryology, pp. 112–133. Spencer, History of British Midwifery, pp. 1–6.
66. HERSCHEL, Sir John Frederick William. Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars. [In:] Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, vol. 154, part I. London, Printed by Taylor and Francis… 1864.
4to, 5 leaves, 137 pages. Herschel’s paper occupies the entire volume. Contemporary dark blue morocco, a little marked and rubbed.
Provenance: The Observatory, Birr Castle (inscribed on the front free endpaper), Parsonstown, Ireland, seat of the earl of Rosse. This copy bears extensive annotations in pencil on the last blank page, and each of the 5079 entries in the catalogue has been marked as checked, apparently in the hand of the third earl of Rosse (1800–1867), astronomer, who is mentioned many times in Herchel’s notes to the catalogue on pp. 14–40, a nice association.
£1100
FIRST EDITION. “John Herschel’s dedication to his father’s legacy as well as to observing nebulae and double stars led him to devote much effort during the last decade of his life to compiling observations of these objects into two large catalogues. The first of two large compilations was published in 1865 in the Royal Society’s Transactions as ‘A catalogue of nebulae and clusters of stars’, and listed 5079 known nebulae, all but 450 of which had been discovered by William and John Herschel” (ODNB).
“The resulting great catalogue on 5,079 nebulae…is, and will probably long remain, the fundamental source of information on the subject” (Clerke, A popular history of astronomy, p. 50.
Herschel almost certainly went to Birr Castle in 1843 during the meeting of the British Association when the earl, as president, arranged a visit to the observatory.
Parkinson, Breakthroughs, 1864.
67. HERSCHEL, Sir John Frederick William. A New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars being the catalogue of the late Sir John F.W. Herschel, Bart. revised, corrected, and enlarged by J.L.E. Dreyer. Reprinted from the Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. XLIX. London: Royal Astronomical Society… 1888.
4to, 1 leaf, pp. 237, (3) blank. Original printed boards (spine neatly repaired). A little foxing on the endpapers and a dampstain in the gutter of the rear endpaper, otherwise a very clean copy, uncut and unopened.
Presentation copy with a fine association, being the copy presented to the owner of the observatory where the work was carried out: inscribed on the front free endpaper “The Right Hon. The Earl of Rosse with J.L.E. Dreyer’s compliments”, and with the stamp of Birr Castle, seat of the earl of Rosse, on the title and upper cover.
£1200
FIRST SEPARATE EDITION of Dreyer’s enlargement of Herschel’s great catalogue of 1864.
Dreyer’s wife was the daughter of John Tuthill of Kilmore, co. Limerick, Ireland. “This connection and Dreyer’s reputation gained him an invitation…to succeed as astronomer in charge of the fourth earl of Rosse’s observatory at Birr Castle, Parsonstown, King’s county. His task was to complete the third earl’s observations of nebulae and clusters made between 1848 and 1867 and prepare the work for publication… In an important supplement to Herschel’s catalogue of 1864, Dreyer provided notes and corrections to Herschel’s objects and added 1,172 more. This completed the work at Birr, and demonstrated Dreyer’s skills in assessing errors and making precision measurements and his painstaking scholarship” (ODNB).
“Dreyer enriched astronomy by three monumental works of research, collection, and editing. The first is A New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars (1888). …at the suggestion of the Royal Astronomical Society he used the Herschel catalogue as a basis for the compilation of the New General Catalogue, renumbering all the 7,840 objects discovered up to 1888 and giving their positions and descriptions…” (DSB).
68 Herschel
A
Remarkable Photograph
68. HERSCHEL, Sir John Frederick William. The Forty-Foot Telescope at Slough. Photographed by Sir John F.W. Herschel. [Photographed in 1839; this print made in] August 1890. Circular silver photographic print, 9.2 cm in diameter, mounted on paper incorporating a printed title and descriptive letterpress dated August 1890 with the signatures of two of Herschel’s sons, mounted on card. In the original frame, by Ryman & Co. of Oxford, made from the rungs of the
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ladder to the telescope. With Ryman’s label and a printed descriptive notice on the back (chipped missing two blank corners and a few letters from 6 lines of the text).
£8500 + VAT in the UK
The earliest photograph of a scientific instrument; the earliest record photograph, i.e. the first photograph deliberately taken to record an object prior to its disappearance; the first successful photograph taken on glass; and Sir John Herschel’s only camera image.
Although some images had previously been made on light-sensitive paper, this image was made in the first year of photography as we know it, i.e. using the negative/positive process. On January 22nd 1839 Herschel heard about Daguerre’s experiments. On January 30th, the second day of his photographic researches, Herschel made the first of several images of his father’s 40-foot telescope using a Dollond telescope lens. These images were the first ‘negatives’ (as he called them) to be made on glass, and Herschel’s only camera images. He fixed these images with his method of using sodium thiosulphate, or ‘hypo’, which came to be recognised as the most useful of all the chemicals proposed as the fixer for silver-based photographic images. A few prints or ‘positives’ were made from the negatives at the time. On February 1st he was visited by William Henry Fox Talbot. By 1890 no original prints of this image were known, and so 25 copies were made by projection from the best of the original negatives which had been on exhibition in the Science Museum, the photographic work being done by Sir John Herschel’s eldest son Sir William J. Herschel (1833–1917), himself a pioneer of colour photography. The present copy is one of those 25, and is signed on the mount by two of Herschel’s sons including Sir William. The negative, now faded almost beyond recognition, is still preserved in the Science Museum, London.
The 40-foot telescope was constructed by William Herschel (1738–1822) in the grounds of his house in Slough, and completed in 1789. It was the largest of a succession of important instruments that Herschel himself made. The massive reflecting telescope weighed over a ton, and became a much-visited wonder of the age. It was the largest telescope in the world for some fifty years, and the two 4-foot mirrors made for it were also the largest in the world. By 1839 the frame was becoming unsafe, and so in December of that year it was dismantled, but not before William’s son Sir John Herschel had taken this image of it, the only one ever made. The frame of this copy was made from the rungs of the ladder that went up to the telescope.
69. HOME, Francis. The Principles of Agriculture and Vegetation. The second edition, with additions. London: Printed for A. Millar…and A. Kincaid and J. Bell, at Edinburgh. 1759. 8vo, pp. viii, 207. Contemporary quarter calf and marbled sides (nicely rebacked, spine ruled in gilt, red morocco label). Fine armorial bookplate of Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo.
£380
Second edition of a milestone in the history of chemical and agricultural literature, being “the first book devoted exclusively to explaining the principles underlying agriculture from a chemical standpoint” (Neville). Home insisted that a knowledge of chemistry was essential for understanding the principles of agriculture, and was the first person to attempt to establish a rotational system of agriculture and plant nutrition. He thus “laid the foundation on which modern agricultural science is based” (Fussel). Home was a Scottish physician whose interests extended beyond medicine (he also published an important book on bleaching). Neville I, p. 654. Fussell, The Old English Farming Books, 36. Browne, A Source Book of Agricultural Chemistry, pp. 117–126: “The editio princeps of all subsequent works on agricultural chemistry.” This edition was enlarged by some 30 pages.
Early Scottish Agriculture
Early Irish Industry
70. [HOPE, Sir Thomas.] A Treatise concerning the Manner of Fallowing of Ground, Raising of Grass-Seeds, and Training of Lint and Hemp, for the increase and improvement of linnen-manufactories in Scotland. Publishe’d for the benefit of the farmers in that kingdom, by the Honourable Society for Improving in the Knowledge of Agriculture. Edinburgh: Printed by Robert Fleming and Company, 1724.
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8vo, pp. 118, (8), 127–173, (3) blank, and 7 folding engraved plates. Woodcut head- and tailpieces and initial. Contemporary panelled calf, red morocco label on spine. Faint dampstain in 10 leaves, but a nice copy.
£1600
FIRST EDITION. The first book published by the Society of Improvers in the Knowledge of Agriculture in Scotland, which was the first agricultural society in Europe, formed in June 1723. This work is one of the earliest works on flax and hemp published in Scotland. It has been variously attributed to Richard Bradley and William Macintosh, but according to the ODNB it was largely the work of Hope, the first president of the society, aided by Robert Maxwell of Arkland, the secretary.
The text incorporates (Chapters 5–8) the second edition of Louis Crommelin’s An essay towards the improving of the hempen and flaxen manufactures in the kingdom of Ireland (Dublin, 1705), which was one of the earliest, perhaps the first, Irish books on Irish industry. These four chapters are on hemp, spinning, linen, and bleaching, and contain many details of historical and scientific interest. The plates show details of various types of loom. Crommelin is described as ‘the founder of the linen-manufactory in Ireland, about the year 1700’. He was requested by the king to be director of the linen manufacture at Lisburn, where he brought in skilled Irish, French and Dutch workers, and ordered 1000 weaving looms.
Fussell, The old English farming books, pp. 109–110, discussing the authorship. McDonald, Agricultural writers, p. 208. Henrey, British botanical and horticultural literature before 1800, II, pp. 603–605.
In the Original Boards
71. HUNTER, John. A Treatise on the Blood, Inflammation, and Gun-Shot Wounds. To which is prefixed, a short account of the author’s life, by his brother-in-law, Everard Home. London: Printed by John Richardson, for George Nicol,… 1794.
4to, pp. lxvii, 575, engraved frontispiece portrait after Sir Joshua Reynolds with the original tissue guard, and 9 engraved plates. Original boards, uncut, spine lettered in manuscript. The upper joint is split in the middle but not at the ends, signature R is spotted as usual but very faintly, otherwise this copy is in an extraordinarily good state of preservation and very clean with no marks at all worth mentioning.
£5750
71 Hunter
FIRST EDITION and an unbelievably fine copy. John Hunter, one of the greatest surgeons of all time, collected the material for this “epochmaking book” (G&M) while serving with the army at Belle Isle during the Seven Years’ War. Published posthumously, it is easily the largest work by a British surgeon to date. His studies on inflammation in particular are fundamental for pathology, as there was little understanding of the subject before his time. He classified inflammation into three types, and was the first to assess and describe three essential factors of wound pathology: first, that an external agent in the air, and not the air itself, is a factor in wound inflammation; second, that a good blood supply is essential in maintaining the natural defences of the body; and third, that the presence of mortified tissue in a deep wound prevents healing and promotes the onset of sepsis. He was outstanding in importance to orthopaedic surgery among
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eighteenth century surgeons, and made epoch-making studies of the surgical diseases of the vascular system. He was acknowledged by Virchow as the founder of experimental and surgical pathology, and his collection of pathological specimens was at one time the finest in the world.
This is by far the finest copy of this book that I have ever seen. It is a book that was read extensively and to find a copy in completely original state is quite remarkable.
G&M 2283. Grolier One Hundred (Medicine), 52. Lilly, Classical Works, 112. Willius & Keys, Cardiac Classics, pp. 263–275, reproducing Hunter’s description of his own fatal illness, angina pectoris. Bick, Classics of Orthopaedics, 4. Long, History of Pathology, pp. 148–153. LeFanu, John Hunter, A List, p. 15.
First Modern Book on Dentition
72. HURLOCK, Joseph. A practical treatise upon dentition; or, the breeding of the teeth in children: wherein the causes of the acute symptoms arising in that dangerous period are enquired into... London: printed for the author,... 1742.
8vo, pp. xxiv, 285, 3 leaves. Contemporary mottled calf (upper joint and ends of spine neatly restored), red morocco label on spine. A very fine, fresh copy. Presentation copy from the author’s son, inscribed on the front endpaper “To Sir William Bishop from the Author’s Son Peter Hurlock”, and with the signature of William Bishop of Maidstone on the title.
£6800
FIRST EDITION. G&M 3672. The first book on dentition of modern times (that is, since Hippocrates), and only the second book in English on dentistry (the first was Charles Allen’s The operator for the teeth, 1685, of which Wing records 4 copies of 3 editions). “As far as English dental literature is concerned, it began with Joseph Hurlock in 1742. Hurlock was a strong advocate of lancing the gums of infants to permit teeth to erupt more readily and thus prevent convulsions. His treatise was a plea for parents and nurses to allow him to carry out this procedure. Hurlock apparently was a keen observer of dental conditions then found in children, noticing that the havoc wrought by caries in the deciduous teeth was undoubtedly due to diet, and recommended that such youngsters be sent to the country where fresh air and better food could be obtained” (Weinberger, Introduction to the history of dentistry, p. 330).
Still, History of paediatrics, pp. 360–364. While reasonably widely held in institutional libraries, Hurlock’s book is one of the great rarities of dental literature, and copies very seldom appear for sale.
The Wave Theory
of Light
73 HUYGENS, Christiaan. Traité de la Lumiere. Où sont expliquées les causes de ce qui luy arrive dans la reflexion, & dans la refraction. Et particulierement dans l’etrange refraction du Cristal D’Islande. Par C.H.D.Z. Avec un discours de la cause de la Pesanteur. A Leide: Chez Pierre Vander Aa,… 1690.
4to, pp. (viii), 124; 1 leaf (divisional title), pp. 125–128, (2) contents, 129–180. General title printed in red and black, printer’s woodcut device on both titles, many diagrams in the text. Contemporary vellum. Old library stamp on title, old typographical Florentine bookplate on front pastedown; bookplate of David L. Dilaura. Paper very slightly browned except for signature R, but a fine copy. £40,000 FIRST EDITION. One of the great classics in the literature of optics. In this book Huygens first established the wave or pulse theory of light, in opposition to the corpuscular theory advanced by Newton. He propounded what is now known as “Huygens’ principle” which enabled him to explain the reflection and refraction of light on the basis of his undulatory theory. Chapter V contains Huygens’ analysis of the double refraction which Erasmus Bartholin had observed in crystals of Iceland spar in 1670. He described the polarisation of light, but was unable to explain it. Huygens completed the Traité in 1678, but chose not to publish it until prompted to do so by the publication of Newton’s Principia in 1687 and by a meeting with Newton in June of 1689. Huygens’ work remained unaccepted and in opposition to Newton for over a century until Thomas Young used it to explain optical interference. Modern physicists fuse both theories.
continued...
The second part of this book, Discours de la Cause de la Pesanteur, contains Huygens’ mechanical explanation of gravity.
Horblit 54. Dibner 146. Evans, Epochal Achievements, 32. Parkinson, Breakthroughs, 1690. Sparrow, Milestones of Science, 111. DiLaura, Bibliotheca Opticoria, 198. Wolf, History of Science, I, pp. 260–264 (with several reproductions). Norman catalogue 1139.
There are two issues of the title-page: one has the author’s initials only (as in the present copy), and the other has his name in full. No priority has been established, but the issue with his initials only is more likely to be the first.
First Geological Map of Ireland
74. IRISH RAILWAY COMMISSION. Atlas to accompany 2d. Report of the Railway Commissioners Ireland 1838 [so titled on upper cover]. Maps… Presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty. 1838.
Large folio (66 x 49 cm.), title + 6 double-page engraved maps (the geological map hand-coloured). Numbered in upper corner with small engraved slips pasted on (some upper corners worn and the first slip mostly missing). Original limp brown cloth and burgundy morocco spine with matching morocco label on upper cover (ends of spine split, label slightly chipped, some small marks and minor damage, the cloth and maps with four vertical wrinkles where previously lightly folded). A very well preserved copy in its original binding, especially considering the large size of a very slim volume.
£9250
FIRST EDITION, incorporating the first geological map of Ireland, the first published ‘flow maps’, and one of the first maps of population density.
In planning the construction of a railway system in Ireland, the Irish Railway Commissioners needed plans and information, collated and displayed in map form. The first map shows the railway lines proposed by the Commission and by private parties, the second the comparative density of the population, the third and fourth the relative quantities of traffic and passengers, the fifth the geology of Ireland through which the lines were to be built, and the sixth the railway communications between England and Ireland.
The first and sixth maps were prepared for the Irish Railway Commission by Lt. Larcomb, R.E. (later Major-General Sir Thomas Larcomb) who was in charge of the Trigonometrical Survey of Ireland. It was on his “fine new Ordnance Survey map of Ireland” that Griffith’s geological map was based.
The second, third and fourth maps were drawn up by Lt. Henry Harness, R.E. (later General Sir Henry Harness), the third and fourth being the first published ‘flow maps’, preceding Charles Joseph Minard’s work by eight years. The population map is an early example of its type.
The fifth map is the first geological map of Ireland, by the civil engineer and geologist Sir Richard Griffith, who was one of the four railway commissioners for Ireland. Over twenty years in preparation, it is drawn to a scale of 10 miles to the inch, signed by Griffith and dated Dublin, April 28th 1838.
See A.G. Davis, “Notes on Griffith’s geological maps of Ireland” in J. Soc. Bibl. of Natural History, 2, 6 (Oct. 1950), pp. 209–211. For an account of Griffith’s life and work, particularly the progress of his geological survey of Ireland, see M.H. Close, “Anniversary address to the Royal Geological Society of Ireland” in J. Roy. Geol. Soc. Ireland, 15 (NS. 5, 1880): 132–148. See also Joan M. Eyles in DSB, 5, 537–539.
COPAC finds 3 copies, listing this atlas separately to the Report. Not in Skempton, who lists (402) the Second Report containing only the sixth map present here.
Became the Standard Work
75. JAMES, Colonel Sir Henry. Instructions for taking Meteorological Observations; with tables for their correction, and notes on meteorological phenomena. Drawn up, by order of the Secretary of State for War… London: Printed by George E. Eyre and William Spottiswoode [for H.M.S.O.]. 1861.
8vo, pp. (iv), 5–52, and 22 lithographed plates (some coloured, some tinted, 4 folding); 34 pages, 1 leaf (imprint), 2 folding plates. Some light spotting and light browning in the margins, two folding plates lightly browned. Original blue cloth (ends of spine a little worn), yellow endpapers, front pastedown with advertisement for this book and another by James pasted in. Signature of P.J. Frazer, Royal Victoria Hospital, Netley, 1868 on front endpaper.
£325
Second and final edition, first published the previous year although the Royal Engineers had published a set of Instructions in 1851 which were drawn up by James.
Henry James was a colonel in the Royal Engineers who spent much of his career working for the Ordnance Survey, becoming its superintendent in 1854. “Under Sir Henry’s direction the book of Instructions for meteorological observations was drawn up which appears in modern form as the Observer’s Handbook of the Meteorological Office” (Shaw, Manual of meteorology, p. 137). The last section, which has its own title-page, is “Tables for the Reduction of the Meteorological Observations…”, with samples of two standard forms at the end.
First Medical Book by an Englishman
76. JOHN OF GADDESDEN. Rosa Anglica Practica Medicine a capita ad pedes. [Colophon:] Emendatum per magistrum Nicolaus Scyllacium… Pavie [Pavia]: Joannes Antonius Biretta, 24th January 1492. [Bound with:] BERNARD OF GORDON. Tractatus de Urinis. & de cautellis urinarum. Cum tractatus de pulsibus (title taken from colophon). [Colophon:] Impressus Ferarie [Ferrara]: per… Andream Gallum, 4th March 1487.
2 works in 1 volume, small folio, (4) + 173 leaves, (1) leaf (blank); (24) unnumbered leaves. Text in double columns, initials in alternating red and blue over printed guide letters, paragraph marks in red throughout, woodcut printer’s device at end. Title finger-soiled in lower corner and with added details of the author and imprint in manuscript, ink stain on extreme fore-edges in first and last gatherings, b2 in second work with long vertical tear in inner margin repaired, some small stains and finger-soiling, some minor spotting or browning. Contemporary calf over wooden boards, ruled and stamped in blind in different designs (endpapers replaced in the 18th or 19th century and first and last gatherings re-hinged with vellum, tips of corners neatly repaired, joints cracked but perfectly strong, lacking clasps, some wormholes on lower cover).
Provenance: Numerous contemporary marginal notes in Latin, especially in the first 30 leaves. Early signature of (?)Stephan Ruders— on title; Antoine François du Fourcroy (1755–1809), chemist, with a long bibliographical note possibly in his hand on free endpaper; his sale by Tillard, Paris, 10th December 1810, lot 1213; Bernard Quaritch Ltd. catalogue 1149; bookplates of Kenneth Rapoport and Eugene S. Flamm.
1. FIRST EDITION of the first printed medical book by an Englishman.
£45,000
John of Gaddesden (d. 1348 or 1349) was a court physician who left a considerable reputation. He was the first major medical scholar to have been trained wholly in England, and the only Oxfordtrained medieval physician to achieve recognition on the Continent. He practised the arts of the surgeon and barber-surgeon as well as those of the physician. His Rosa Anglica, written in about 1313, was a distillation of the works of more than forty-six medical authorities, ancient and recent, but it also contains a good many original remarks which illustrate the character of the author more than his medical knowledge. The book begins with an account of fevers based on Galen’s arrangement, then goes through diseases and injuries beginning with the head. The last part is on wounds, fractures, hernias, etc. The work ends with an antidotarium or treatise on remedies (see DNB and ODNB).
The book contains some remarks on cooking, and innumerable prescriptions, many of which are superstitious, while others prove to be common-sense remedies when carefully considered. It includes “the familiar skin diseases and made some interesting observations, including reference to the use of red light in the treatment of smallpox, which was revived on scientific grounds by Finson six hundred years later” (Pusey, History of dermatology, p. 38).
continued...
The author’s disposition and his peculiarities are so precisely those of the ‘Doctour of Physik’ in Chaucer’s prologue, where he is mentioned in line 434, that it seems possible that Gaddesden is the contemporary from whom Chaucer drew this character. Bernard of Gordon was also mentioned by Chaucer in the same sentence as Gaddesden as an authority on medicine.
76 John of Gaddesden
2. FIRST EDITION of the second printed book on urology together with Bernard’s brief tract on the pulse, two of the few diagnostic measures available to physicians at that time. These two tracts were added to later editions of Bernard’s Lilium medicinae. “He divided disorders of the bladder into strangury, or the passage of urine drop by drop, and dysuria or the retention of urine” (Murphy, The history of urology, p. 43). The Lilium medicinae, which was completed at Montpellier in 1305, is thought to have inspired John of Gaddesden’s title for the Rosa Anglica, which actually contains quotes from the Lilium. 1: Klebs 424.1 (the only incunable edition). G&M 2191. 2: Klebs 180.1.
Kepler’s First Book on Optics
77. KEPLER, Johannes. Ad Vitellionem paralipomena, quibus astronomiae pars optica traditur; potissimùm de artificiosa observatione et aestimatione diametrorum deliquiorumque; solis & lunae. Cum exemplis insignium eclipsium. Habes hoc libro, Lector, inter alia multa nova, tractatum luculentum de modo visionis, & humorum oculi visu, contra opticos & anatomicos,... Francofurti [Frankfurt]: Apud Claudium Marnium & Haeredes Joannis Aubrii, 1604.
4to, pp. (xvi), 449, (18) index and errata, 1 engraved plate of the eye and 1 leaf of explanatory text, 2 folding letterpress tables, numerous woodcut figures in the text. Upper outer corner of title-page neatly restored, tiny hole in lower part of title, signatures K and P browned (as usual) and light foxing elsewhere. 19th century red quarter morocco, spine gilt in compartments, marbled sides, marbled edges and endpapers, good copy. Bookplate of David L. DiLaura.
£19,500
FIRST EDITION of Kepler’s first book on optics and a highly significant work in the history of ophthalmology in which he defined the optics and function of the eye. Kepler clearly defined the concept of the light ray, which was the foundation of modern geometrical optics, as well as the formation of images from pin-holes and the nature of images from mirrors and lenses.
The work is in two parts: the first part, which Kepler intended to be an appendix to Witelo (hence “Ad Vitellionem paralipomena”) is “a treatise on vision and the human eye in which is shown for the first time how the retina is essential to sight, the part the lens plays in refraction, and that the convergence of luminous rays before reaching the retina is the cause of myopia” (Garrison p. 260). Kepler describes the nature of central and peripheral vision and demonstrates the part that the vitreous plays in keeping the retina taut.
The second part, the “Astronomiae Pars Optica”, comprises six chapters which “include not only a discussion of parallax, astronomical refraction, and his eclipse instruments but also the annual variation in the apparent size of the sun. Since the changing size of the solar image is inversely proportional to the sun’s distance, this key problem was closely related to his planetary theory; unfortunately his observational results were not decisive” (DSB).
This book contains “the first correct physiological explanation of the defects of sight, with a theory of vision, the first suggestion of the undulatory theory of light, an approximately correct formula of refraction (pointing out the relation between the sine of incident and refracted rays), the first announcement of one of the principal axioms of photometry, his method of calculating eclipses, still in use, etc. etc.” (Sotheran 5300).
DiLaura, Bibliotheca Opticoria, 52. Caspar, Bibliographia Kepleriana, 18. Cinti, Biblioteca Galileiana, 13. Parkinson, Breakthroughs, 1604. Becker catalogue 216.1. Albert, Norton & Hurtes 1226.
Early Study of Sea-Weeds
78. KING, Edward. Sea Plants from the Coast of Norfolk… This book contains specimens of that wonderful part of the Creation where the animal & vegetable world are so closely united that it is very difficult to perceive where the one begins and where the other ends. [On f. 2:] Collected in the year 1769.
Folio, 134 leaves, comprising title within ruled border, 6 sub-titles (four dated 1769, the other two undated), and 127 leaves each with a mounted specimen on the recto and its identification and notes on the verso of the preceding leaf. A few of the specimens are broken with loose pieces.
Paper lightly browned. Contemporary half calf (worn, covers detached, marbled sides rubbed and dampstained), in an early cloth folder.
£4800
MANUSCRIPT. An early, perhaps the earliest, substantial English collection and study of marine flora, in particular, sea-weeds.
This album contains 127 leaves of specimens, each recto having one, two or more specimens, some held in place with small strips of paper. Most were collected on the coast of Norfolk but a few were collected at Brighton in East Sussex and at Scarborough in North Yorkshire, and all in a single year. At the end are a dozen specimens of Eschara or hornwrack, also collected in Norfolk. Their original colour (brown, green or red) appears to be mostly well preserved. On the facing verso in each case the specimen is identified with its scientific name or common name, and sometimes both, sometimes with notes and references. As he indicates on the title-leaf, King is particularly interested in the fact that some of these specimens are actually animals, which he notes in several places, for instance in more samples of hornwrack on f. 42: “All these when in the Sea are Living Animals.”
King’s only references to other works are to the Philosophical Transactions and to John Ellis’s An essay towards a natural history of the Corallines: and other marine productions of the like kind, commonly found on the coasts of Great Britain and Ireland (1755), on calcareous sea-weeds. The collections of Lilly Wigg (1749–1828) and Amelia Griffiths (1768–1858) were made rather later, while the earliest English printed works on algae (which includes sea-weeds) were Thomas Velley’s Coloured figures of marine plants, found on the southern coast of England (1795) and Nereis Britannica (1795–1801) by John Stackhouse (see Henrey II, pp. 158–162).
79. KIRKPATRICK [or KILPATRICK], James. The Analysis of Inoculation: comprizing the history, theory, and practice of it: with an occasional consideration of the most remarkable appearances in the Small Pocks. The second edition corrected: and greatly enlarged… London: Printed for J. Buckland…and R. Griffiths… 1761.
8vo, pp. (xii), xxxi, (i), 429, (16) errata and index, (3) blank. Contemporary calf, spine with raised bands and gilt rules, red morocco label. Endpapers browned, and text very slightly browned, but a fine and fresh copy. Inscribed in a bold hand on the front endpaper: “February, 1788. Cost, two shillings, and six pence, £ 2.6”.
£1600
“In the wake of his son’s death [from smallpox], Kilpatrick advocated inoculation against smallpox through articles in the South-Carolina Gazette… In 1743 he published, in London, An Essay on Inoculation Occasioned by the Smallpox Being Brought into South Carolina in the Year 1738, assembled from his South-Carolina Gazette articles, which established him as a respected authority on inoculation…. In 1746 he worked with Isaac Maddox, bishop of Worcester, in the foundation of the Middlesex County Hospital for the Smallpox, where the lower classes were inoculated free of charge. His Analysis of Inoculation (1754), was effectively a textbook of the practice and was widely cited… The work was translated into Dutch, German, and French and established his international reputation” (ODNB).
Silverstein, A history of immunology, pp. 14–15. Rosen, A history of public health, p. 185: “Partly through his influence…inoculation became a well-established practice.”
80. LA CHAMBRE, [Martin Cureau de]. La Lumiere. A Paris: Chez P. Rocolet,... 1657. 4to, 1 leaf (engraved title-page), 10 leaves, pp. 64, 67–368, 379–414, 5 leaves. Full-page engraved dedication to Cardinal Mazarin, 2 large engraved illustrations and several smaller woodcuts in the text, woodcut head- and tailpieces and initials. Single tiny wormhole in margin of first 7 leaves, single wormhole in upper margin becoming a wormtrack in a dozen leaves, a few leaves with dampstain at top (mostly very faint). Contemporary speckled calf, spine finely gilt (but gilt rubbed away at ends, upper joint just cracking, score-marks on upper cover). Contemporary inscription of Joseph de Banneville on title, old inscription concerning Richelieu on front pastedown; bookplate of David L. DiLaura.
£3200
FIRST EDITION. La Chambre’s principal book on the nature and origins of light and colour, a subject to which he returned many times in other books. “La Lumière has its roots in La Chambre’s previous publication…of 1634. Most of La Chambre’s ideas—and unique vocabulary—regarding the nature of light and its interaction with objects are here considerably expanded to present an eclectic, scholastic treatment of light and color… Like much of La Chambre’s work, La Lumière is a fashionable, gracious, and elaborately written ‘discourse’ intended, perhaps, to startle and attract with novel theories, but lacking any substantiation let alone experimental support” (DiLaura). La Chambre was counsellor and physician to Louis XIV of France, a member of the Académie Française, and one of the founders of the Académie des Sciences. A close associate of Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin, La Chambre was the author of many books on physics and medicine. DiLaura, Bibliotheca Opticoria, 107. Albert, Norton & Hurtes 1285. Becker catalogue 223.
The Science of Photometry
81. LAMBERT, Johann Heinrich. Photometria sive de mensura et gradibus luminis, colorum et umbrae. Augustae Vindelicorum [Augsburg]: Sumptibus viduae Eberhardi Klett, typis Christophori Petri Detleffsen. 1760.
8vo, pp. (xvi), 547, (13), and 8 stilted and folding engraved plates. Woodcut device on title, woodcut headpiece and tailpieces. Contemporary vellum, blindstamped lozenge on sides, brown imitation morocco label on spine, marbled endpapers, blue sprinkled edges. Very faint dampstain in outer corners of first 30 leaves, very light scattered foxing up to gathering Ee, upper cover stained, otherwise a very good copy.
£27,500
FIRST EDITION of the foundation for the science of photometry — the exact scientific measurement of light.
“In the Photometria Lambert described his photometer and propounded the law of absorption of light named after him. He investigated the principles and properties of light, of light passing through transparent media, light reflected from opaque surfaces, physiological optics, the scattering of light passing through transparent media, the comparative luminosity of the heavenly bodies and the relative intensity of coloured lights and shadows. His discoveries are of fundamental importance in astronomy, photography and visual research generally. Even in the modern world of wave mechanics, the Photometria remains a significant book. Indeed there is hardly any aspect of photometry that was not fully covered by Lambert’s investigations” (PMM).
“Photometria was the first work to accurately identify most fundamental photometric concepts, to assemble them into a coherent system of photometric quantities, to define these quantities with a precision sufficient for mathematical statement, and to build from them a system of photometric principles” (DiLaura).
This is a copy with good margins (two leaves are unopened), and is almost entirely free of the foxing and browning so often seen in other copies.
Printing and the Mind of Man 205. Horblit 62. DiLaura, Bibliotheca Opticoria, 449.
82. LARREY, Dominique Jean, Baron. Relation Historique et Chirurgicale de l’Expédition de l’Armée d’Orient, en Egypte et en Syrie. Paris: Chez Demonville et Soeurs,... 1803.
8vo, pp. 10, (1) errata, 480, 2 engraved plates. Half-title. Contemporary quarter calf and blue boards, flat spine gilt and with red morocco label (very neat repairs to ends of spine), vellum tips. A very good and clean copy. Later bookplate of Paul Wilkinson. £1500
FIRST EDITION of the medical report of Napoleon’s campaigns in Egypt and Syria. It includes a reprint of Larrey’s description of trachoma, first printed in Cairo in 1800-01 (G&M 5837, of great rarity), as well as very lucid accounts of other diseases suffered by Napoleon’s army. These include desert blindness, lockjaw, different forms of the plague, wounds to the head, face and chest, amputations, paralysis of injured limbs, testicular tumours (illustrated in the plates), yellow fever and elephantiasis. G&M 12942 (military medicine).
83. LAVATER, Johann Caspar. Essays on Physiognomy… Written in the German language…and translated into English by Thomas Holcroft. Second edition… To which are added, one hundred physiognomonical rules, a posthumous work by Mr. Lavater, and memoirs of the life of the author… London: Printed by C. Whittingham…for H.D. Symonds, and J. Walker… 1804.
4 volumes, 8vo, approx. 1100 pages, frontispiece portrait and 424 plates on 422 sheets (4 plates in vol. 1 are on 2 sheets) including many portraits. Frontispiece offset onto title, foxing on some plates (mostly light), pale dampstain in lower corner of volume 3, the text generally clean. Contemporary tree calf, spines gilt in compartments (lower joint of vol. 4 cracked at foot), red and black morocco labels on spines, a very nice set. Bookplates of Thomas Cubitt.
£325
Second edition in English, and a fine set of this influential work first published as Physiognomische Fragmente in 1775–1778, with four images engraved by William Blake and the whole work overseen by Lavater’s friend Henry Fuseli (1741–1825).
“Lavater’s physiognomy differed from those of his predecessors in that he paid special attention to the structure of the head, particularly the forehead—a form of psychological indexing that exerted some influence on the development of phrenology and brain localization theories in the early nineteenth century. Lavater’s work also influenced artists of the period, both in the overall creation of portraits, and in the use of his physiognomonical theories to construct individual faces in historic paintings” (note to Norman 1285, Lavater’s Von der Physiognomik, 1772).
84. LAWRENCE, William. A Treatise on the Diseases of the Eye. London: Printed for John Churchill... 1833.
8vo, pp. xv, 730, + 2 leaves of adverts dated October 1834 inserted at the beginning and 1 leaf at the end. Half-title. Original cloth-backed boards, one lower corner worn, uncut and largely unopened, bookplate. One or two very minor marks, but a fine copy.
£800
FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH (see below). G&M 5849, citing this edition: “This comprehensive work marks an epoch in ophthalmic surgery. It is based on lectures delivered by Lawrence at the London Ophthalmic Infirmary. He was surgeon to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital; he succeeded Abernethy as lecturer on surgery and did much to advance the surgery of the eye.”
The French edition is the true first. It was prepared and translated from Lawrence’s notes by Charles Billard, and appeared in 1830, three years before this edition.
Albert, Norton & Hurtes 1336: “…a milestone in ophthalmic surgery.” This edition not in the Becker catalogue, which has American editions only.
The Evidence for Leibnitz
85. LEIBNITZ, Gottfried Wilhelm, and Johann BERNOULLI. Commercium Philosophicum et Mathematicum. Tomus primus, ab anno 1694 ad annum 1699 [–Tomus secundus, ab anno 1700. ad annum 1716]. Lausannæ & Genevæ: Sumpt. Marci-Michaelis Bousquet & Socior. 1745.
2 volumes, 4to, pp. (iv), xxviii, 484, engraved frontispiece portrait of Leibnitz and 15 folding engraved plates; 1 leaf, pp, 492, 8 plates. Titles printed in red and black with engraved vignettes, foot of portrait folded in. Plates IX–XII misbound in vol. 2, a few gatherings in vol. 2 lightly browned, some small ink stains on p. 131 of vol. 2. Original Dutch speckled boards and red sheep spines, uncut. Edges of boards a little rubbed, spines a little rubbed and with minor wear to head of vol. 1, otherwise a nice set.
£3200
FIRST EDITION. “Important for containing the evidence, as embodied in the correspondence between Leibnitz and Jean Bernoulli, on the question of the rival claims to priority in the invention of the calculus, between Newton and Leibnitz. It was the only serious claim published in Leibnitz’s favor, and was a tardy answer to the Commercium Epistolicum, which gave the evidence in Newton’s favor” (Babson 196).
Wallis 259. Gray 259. Ravier, Bibliographie…de Leibniz, 427. This copy has the portrait of Leibnitz, which is found only in a minority of copies.
86. LIPEN, Martin. Bibliotheca Realis Medica, omnium materiarum, rerum, et titulorum, in universa medicina occurentium. Ordine alphabetico sic disposita, ut primo statim intuitu tituli, et sub titulis autores medici…collocati… Accedit index autorum copiosissimus. Francofurti ad Moenum: Cura & sumptibus Johannis Friderici, prelo Johannis Nicolai Hummii, 1679.
Folio, 10 leaves, pp. 492, (42) index, 1 leaf (blank). Including the fine engraved title of a scene in a library, woodcut device on title, woodcut head- and tailpieces. Some foxing throughout but some leaves quite heavily foxed (not unusual with this book). Eighteenth century vellum-backed boards, uncut. A fresh and tall copy with no signs of use.
£1800
FIRST EDITION. The first large, well-printed bibliography of medicine, including an elaborate subject analysis, with entries arranged alphabetically by subjects, numerous cross-references, and an author index.
“The problems with which Lipenius had to deal were: 1) how to include as much literature as possible. 2) how to list the literature so that the bibliography could be easily used, 3) how to keep costs down without sacrificing utility or ease. On the first point Lipenius was more successful than Linden; as a result he was able to include approximately twice as many authors as his predecessor… On the second point, the arrangement of his material, Lipenius went far beyond his predecessors… Typographically this is a rich looking, perhaps paper-wasting, but very easily used bibliography… As the first medical bibliography to use cross references extensively, Lipenius’ work is an advance over that of earlier bibliographers…” (Brodman).
G&M 6744.1. Brodman, The development of medical bibliography, pp. 37–44. Fulton, The great medical bibliographers, pp. 58–59.
87. LIVERPOOL & MANCHESTER RAILWAY. Proceedings of the Committee of the House of Commons on the Liverpool and Manchester Railroad Bill. Sessions, 1825. [London: Printed by Thomas Davison… 1825.]
Small folio, pp. xi, (i), 772, and 15 lithographed plates (of which 12 hand-coloured and 11 folding), errata slip. Some leaves lightly browned but generally very clean, folding plate at p. 592 torn and repaired from behind at an early date, folding plate at p. 501 dampstained at top. Contemporary green half morocco, raised bands ruled and tooled in gilt, marbled endpapers and edges.
£1450
FIRST EDITION. The Liverpool & Manchester Railway was the first passenger railway operated solely by steam locomotives. This substantial volume documents the evidence for and against the railway and is the first printed parliamentary proceedings for a railway.
The committee sat for 37 days and took evidence from such important figures as John Rastrick, Nicholas Wood, William Cubitt, and George Stephenson. The Bill, opposed largely by canal and land owners, failed, principally owing to Stephenson’s evidence, not on his locomotive engineering but on his uncertainty as to the line and its civil engineering works. The summing up slated Stephenson, referring to “this trash and confusion of Mr. Stephenson” (p. 727).
However, a new Bill was passed the following year largely thanks to George Rennie, and the railway company appointed Stephenson as the consulting engineer. This important, pioneering line was opened on 15th September 1830.
88. LOWE, Peter. A Discourse of the Whole Art of Chyrurgery… Whereunto is added the rule of making remedies…with the presages of divine Hippocrates. The fourth edition; corrected, and much amended. London: Printed by R. Hodgkinsonne, 1654.
Small 4to, pp. (xxiv), 447, (9); (vi), 463-487. Title within typographical border, divisional title to the Presages dated 1655, full-page woodcut coat-of-arms on verso of title and many fine woodcuts
continued...
(mostly full-page) in the text. Paper browned in places, a few ink spots on pp. 254–255, but for the most part a very good copy. 18th century marbled boards (somewhat rubbed and soiled), nicely rebacked, red morocco label.
Name of Wm. Wright on upper and lower edges; “Purchased at Dr. Whytts sale Edin. Feb. 10 1820” (crossed through) on front endpaper (?Robert Whytt, 1714–1766); presentation inscription dated August 1820 to the Medical Society of Aberdeen on front endpaper, and their library inscription on title.
£3200
The earliest systematic work on the whole subject of surgery published in England. Lowe was trained in Paris, but settled in Glasgow in his native Scotland after practising on the continent and in London. He found surgical and medical procedures badly in need of reform in Scotland and created the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow to supervise the practice of medicine. The Faculty was the first medical organization in Great Britain to include physicians and surgeons together. The collaboration of two groups so often at odds was largely due to Lowe’s insistence on high standards in surgical practice.
Wing L3306. The first edition of 1596 (G&M 5567) is of the utmost rarity and not in most of the great libraries. The second or third editions are the earliest editions obtainable.
89. MACCULLOCH, John. A Geological Classification of Rocks, with descriptive synopses of the species and varieties, comprising the elements of practical geology. London: Published by Longman,... 1821.
8vo, pp. xxxi, (i), 655. Contemporary half calf, flat spine gilt, tips of corners slightly worn, but a nice copy. Bookplate of Edward Bunting.
£600
FIRST EDITION of Macculloch’s “system of classifying rocks. He divided rocks into two main classes: Primary and Secondary. He subdivided Primary into unstratified (granite) and stratified (mainly gneisses and schists, with some sediments). The Secondary included all the younger sediments and a few ‘unstratified’ rocks, which his descriptions clearly indicate were igneous intrusions, although he did not specify them as such. Macculloch also described in detail the occurrences of basalt lava (‘trap’), the remains of the extensive Tertiary basalt lava plateau off the west of Scotland” (DSB). Macculloch was one of the pioneers of of British geology and mineralogy, and prepared the first geological map of Scotland. See Zittel, History of geology, p. 113.
First Printed Herbal
90. MACER FLORIDUS (or Odo de Meung). De Vir[tut]ibus Herbarum.[No place, printer or date; Geneva: Jean Belot, c. 1496.]
4to (186 x 130 mm.), 52 unnumbered leaves. 33 and 34 lines, title-page with a woodcut of a monk in his study with books and jars, repeated on verso, and 66 woodcuts of plants in the text. 18th century sheep marbled in green and brown, spine with gilt centres (now dull, neat repairs to ends of spine), marbled pastedowns, red edges. Title-page slightly soiled, first few leaves with slight foxing and with small diminishing stain in upper margin, some very minor marks and spots, a very well preserved copy. Old shelf mark on front free endpaper.
£55,000
Third or fourth edition (see below) but the first or second illustrated edition of the first printed herbal.
De virtutibus herbarum describes 66 plants and their medicinal properties illustrated with 66 woodcuts followed by eleven brief and unillustrated chapters on spices. The text is in Latin hexameters as a form which could be more easily committed to memory. The work was immediately influential and successful, with numerous later editions and translations. Its authorship has never been established but it is generally assumed to be the work of Odo de Meung-sur-Loire, a French physician of the 11th century, and therefore “of importance as one of the earliest Western documents showing a revival of interest in botany” (Hunt I, p. 4). It is also the origin of the earliest known Scandanavian medical writing, the Laegebog of Henrik Harpestreng. The attribution to ‘Macer Floridus’ arose probably in the 15th century by confusion with the lost poem “De herbis” by the Roman poet Aemilius Macer.
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90 Macer
The first two editions (Naples 1477 and Milan 1482) were unillustrated. This is probably the second of two variants or editions printed by Belot in Geneva in about 1495 or 1496. It is suggested by Lókkös that the two were printed in quick succession as errors such as the misnumbering of chapters were not corrected.
See G&M 1791 (1477 edition): “the earliest printed herbal.” Stillwell, The awakening interest in science, III, 442 (1477 edition): “the first printed herbal to relate solely to the medicinal properties of plants.” Klebs lists six editions printed by Belot and Cruse, the latter identifiable by having fewer illustrations, ascribing the date 1500 to all of them. Lókkös, Catalogue des incunables imprimés à Genève 1478–1500, 86. Thorndike I, pp. 612–615: “…probably the best known single and distinct treatment of the virtues of herbs produced during the middle ages”.
An Historical Source of the First Importance
91. MADHOUSES. Report [–Fourth Report] from the Committee on Madhouses in England. [London:] Ordered, by the House of Commons, to be Printed, 11 July 1815.
Folio, pp. 7, (1), 214, + subtitles to each of the four Reports, and 8 engraved plates (6 double-page) of designs for the West Riding, Bethlem, and other asylums. Recently bound in blue cloth, red morocco label on spine, fine copy.
£1500
FIRST EDITION of the four Reports for 1815, one of the most important documents in the history of psychiatry, bringing the distressing circumstances of the insane in asylums to public attention. There were four Reports in 1815 and a further three in 1816. The actual Report comprises the first 7 pages; the four Reports themselves consist of the Minutes of Evidence. The Reports for 1815 were the most significant, as those for 1816 merely confirmed their findings and took further evidence.
“Together they were a survey of the conditions and treatment of the insane wherever they were confined… A revelation to all but a few when they appeared, they are today a historical source of the first importance containing information nowhere else to be found about how the insane actually fared as opposed to what was written about insanity in books, a disparity between theory and practice which emerges glaringly. Next to them the two earlier Parliamentary enquiries… appear almost insignificant. In contrast the 1815 [&] 1816 Committees’ Minutes of Evidence is a monumental documentary…with plans of asylums, covering all aspects of asylum life…” (Hunter & Macalpine, pp. 696–703).
This is the true first edition of the official government report, and as such extremely hard to find. It was republished in 1815 on the initiative of one of the witnesses, and reprinted by order of Parliament in 1819.
92. MAGATI, Cesare. De Rara Medicatione Vulnerum seu de vulneribus rarò tractandis, libri duo. In quibus nova traditur methodus, qua felicissimè, ac citius quam alio quovis modo sanantur vulnera... Accessit huic editioni Ioannis Baptistae Magati Tractatus, quo rara vulnerum curatio defenditur contra Sennertum. Venetiis [Venice]: Apud Io. Iacobum Hertz, 1676.
2 parts in 1 volume, folio, pp. (viii), 178, (18); (iv), 172, (14), (2) blank. First title-page printed in red and black, separate title-page to the second part, some fine woodcut ornaments, text printed in double columns. Small (2 cm.) hole in lower margin of title. Eighteenth(?) century paper boards, spine slightly chipped, uncut, fine copy.
£900
Second edition of an important surgical treatise, in which Magati pleads for conservative treatment and for the natural processes to be given the chance to heal wounds. Like Paré, Magati believed that gunshot wounds were not in themselves poisonous. “He proposed a rational treatment of wounds, which, in spite of the example set by Paré, were still being treated with unguents of various kinds. He maintained that frequent exposure of wounds to the air was deplorable, and that the introduction of sounds and lint produced dangerous putrefaction. He denied the need for cleaning and anointing and prescribed bandaging with simple linen, to be renewed only after five or six days. These precepts, like those of Paré, were soon forgotten, however, and the old errors were continued
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into the eighteenth century” (Castiglioni). Most of the second part is on wounds of the nerves and the head.
See G&M 2143, the first edition of 1616. Zeis Index 113. Only three editions appeared, but spread over a long period — the third was published in 1733. To the present edition was added a treatise by Magati’s brother against the attacks of Daniel Sennert.
93. [MARAT, Jean-Paul.] A Philosophical Essay on Man. Being an attempt to investigate the principles and laws of the reciprocal influence of the soul and body. London: Printed for F. Newbery…J. Ridley…and T. Payne… 1773.
2 volumes in 1, 8vo, 1 leaf, pp. (ii) “To the Reader” and errata, iv (contents), (iii)–xxx, ii (”Introduction”), (33)–271; 1 leaf, pp. iv (contents), (3)–263, (1), 2 engraved plates bound as frontispieces. Errata corrected in a neat early hand. First title-page a little foxed. Contemporary mottled calf, spine gilt in compartments, red and green morocco labels (one a replacement, joints and ends of spine neatly repaired). Armorial bookplate of John Cator (1728–1806).
£4500
FIRST EDITION of Marat’s first substantial book (a greatly expanded version of his Essay on the Human Soul, 1772). Highly ambitious but without patronage or qualifications, Marat saw this book as his first ticket into intellectual society. His next was The Chains of Slavery (1774), before moving to Paris in 1776.
“In true Cartesian fashion he treats the human body as the machine serving as the organ of the soul. The work is divided into four sections. The first is purely anatomical. The second treats of the human soul…[and] contains a vigorous and detailed polemic with Helvétius, who, as is well known, would derive the passions from the system of physical sensations. It is the task of the third section, which is divided into two parts, to deal respectively with the modifying influence of the bodily machine on the indwelling soul and of the soul upon the physical mechanism. In this section the phenomena of sleep and dreaming are expatiated upon, as illustrating the author’s theses… The fourth section of the book deals with the causes and modus operandi of the influence of body and soul on each other,…through…what he terms the “nervous fluids”, by which he understands a subtle ether or substance, “neither grossly material, like the body, nor purely immaterial, like the soul”, but occupying a position between the two, which is the vivifying power of living nervesubstance, and which is concentrated in its greatest intensity in the brain. The movements of this mysterious fluid combine with the elasticity of the fibres and the physical quality of the various organs affected, upon which moral and physical peculiarities depend” (Ernest Belfort Bax, JeanPaul Marat, the people’s friend).
There were two issues in 1773, one without, and one with (as here), Newbery’s name in the imprint. Both are extremely rare on the market.
94. MARCET, Alexander. An Essay on the Chemical History and Medical Treatment of Calculous Disorders. London: Printed for Longman… 1817.
8vo, pp. xvi, 181, 10 leaves, 10 engraved plates (3 hand-coloured), errata slip pasted on p. 181. Halftitle. Some foxing and offsetting on the plates and leaves of explanation, and each plate with an old and fairly faint library stamp. Good modern half calf antique.
£450
FIRST EDITION. “The object of this work…is to describe, and illustrate by means of accurate engravings, the characters by which the different calculi may be distinguished…” (the introduction).
“Between 1807 and 1820, with William Babington and William Allen, Marcet lectured on chemistry at Guy’s Hospital medical school… In 1817 Marcet published his most important and original work, An Essay on the Chemical History and Medical Treatment of Calculous Disorders, which contained much chemical information and some good drawings of renal and urinary calculi. In chemical tests Marcet used very small quantities, a valuable technique which he derived from the work of William Hyde Wollaston; he also used the blowpipe. He was probably the first to remark that the pain caused by a renal calculus is often due to its passage down a ureter, whereas it may grow in the kidney without causing acute suffering. The book was useful to chemical pathologists,
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but Marcet regretted that no London hospital then kept any regular record of calculus cases. He identified a new type of urinary calculus, consisting of xanthic oxide, and he later investigated alcaptonuria, the condition in which the urine turns black” (ODNB).
Marcet (1770–1822) was born in Geneva, Switzerland, the only son of a merchant of Huguenot descent. The last plate shows his chemical apparatus.
95. MARIOTTE, [Edmé]. Oeuvres… Comprenant tous les Traitez de cet auteur, tant ceux qui avoient déja paru séparément, que ceux qui n’avaoient pas encore été publiez; imprimées sur les exemplaires les plus exacts & les plus complets; revuës & corrigées de nouveau. A Leide [Leiden]: Chez Pierre Vander Aa… 1717.
2 volumes, 4to: pp. (xii), 320; 2 leaves, pp. (321)–566, 1 leaf, pp. 603–701, (35), and 26 folding engraved plates (including no. IV*). Titles printed in red and black with engraved vignette, 2 engravings in the text. Paper rather browned but still fresh. Contemporary English speckled calf, black spines richly gilt in compartments, red morocco labels, a lovely copy. Signature of William Hillary M.D. dated 1723 on front free endpapers, and his armorial bookplate dated 1743 on the pastedowns. £2400
FIRST COLLECTED EDITION, containing all of Mariotte’s published works. Among the most important works in these volumes are his treatise on percussion, the nature of air (“Mariotte’s Law”), radiant heat, colours, hydromechanics (“Mariotte’s flask”), vegetation, and his observations on vision. They also contain his previously unpublished Traité du mouvement des pendules, which Huygens possessed in manuscript and gave to the University of Leyden. The introduction contains valuable information on the bibliography of Mariotte, who is credited with introducing experimental physics into France.
The first owner of this copy, William Hillary (1697–1763), probably bought it new in Leiden, where he obtained his MD in 1722. He practised in Ripon until 1734 when he moved to Bath, where he had his bookplate engraved.
Roberts & Trent, Bibliotheca Mechanica, pp. 217–218.
“The Best Optical Book of the Renaissance”
96. MAUROLICO, Francesco. Photismi de Lumine, & Umbra ad Perspectivam, & radiorum incidentiam facientes. Diaphanorum partes, seu libri tres: in quorum primo de perspicuis corporibus in secundo de iride: in tertio de organi visualis structura, & conspiciliorum formis agitur. Problemata ad perspectivam, & iridem pertinentia. Omnia nunc primum in lucem edita. Neapoli [Naples]: Ex Typographia Tarquinii Longi, 1611.
4to, pp. (vii), 84. Numerous woodcut diagrams and one woodcut illustration of the anatomy of the eye in the text. C1 and C4 are cancels, and in this copy these two leaves are bound in after the complete gathering C which retains the two cancellands. Neat repairs to inner margin of title and upper inner corner of first 4 leaves, neat repair to tear in fore-edge margin of D4. Modern vellum, brown morocco label on spine. Inscription of the Jesuit college of St. Ignatius on title; bookplate of David L. DiLaura
£28,000
FIRST EDITION of the most important work on optics of the sixteenth century. Edited by Cristoforo Clavio, the work’s publication some 35 years after Maurolico’s death was occasioned in part by Galileo’s discoveries concerning the telescope in 1610. It is extremely rare.
“The greatest part of his Photismi was already written by 1554, and the whole work was completed at the end of 1567, that is, before the publication of Alhazen’s Opticae thesaurus. It does not follow that Maurolyco was not acquainted with Alhazen’s book, because he might have read a manuscript of it, or the Alhazen tradition might have reached him indirectly. However, his own Photismi was very different: it was composed in the Greek mathematical style with which he was familiar. Its full title describes its contents: ‘Light concerning Light, consisting of a Chapter on Shadows & Reflection followed by Three Books on Refraction of which the first deals with transparent bodies, the second with the rainbow, the third with the structure of the human eye and the forms of spectacles’.
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“Maurolycus’ Photismi may have been the best optical book of the Renaissance, but as it remained unpublished it could not exert any influence before 1611” (Sarton, p. 85).
“Maurolico [1494–1575] did important work in optics; indeed, according to Libri, ‘it is in his research on optics, above all, that Maurolico showed the most sagacity’ (Histoire, III, 116). The chief record of this research is Photismi de Lumine et Umbra, in which Maurolico discussed the rainbow, the theory of vision, the effects of lenses, the principal phenomena of dioptrics and catoptrics, radiant heat, photometry, and caustics. Maurolico’s work on caustics was anticipated by that of Leonardo da Vinci (as was his research on centers of gravity), but Leonardo’s work was not published until long after Maurolico’s. Libri further characterized the Photismi de lumine et umbra as ‘full of curious facts and ingenious research’, and Sarton suggested that it might be the most remarkable optical treatise of the sixteenth century outside the tradition of Alhazen, or even the best optical book of the Renaissance (Six Wings, 84, 85).”
The two cancelled leaves, present here in two quite different states of text and illustration, were unknown until seen in this copy. During the printing Clavio changed his mind about the clarity of the text and diagrams accompanying Maurolyco’s explanation of the pinhole camera, which is the earliest such explanation.
DiLaura, Bibliotheca Opticoria, 57. Sarton, Six Wings: Men of Science in the Renaissance, pp. 84–85. Vasco Ronchi, Optics, the science of vision, pp. 39–40. Lindberg, Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler, pp. 178–182. Henry Crew (trans.), The Photismi de Lumine of Maurolycus. A Chapter in Late Medieval Optics. Wolf, History of Science, Technology, &c. in the XVIth and XVIIth Centuries, pp. 245–248, showed that Maurolico’s work on optics anticipated that of Kepler in some respects. Riccardi, I, 142 (the 1575 edition that he cites is a ghost.)
97. MAYNWARINGE, Everard. Morbus Polyrhizos et Polymorphaeus. A Treatise of the Scurvy. The second edition, revised and enlarged by the author. London: Printed by J.D. for S. Thompson… 1666.
Small 8vo, 8 leaves, 134 pages, 1 leaf. Including the licence leaf and the final advertisement leaf, title within double ruled border, separate title-page to the ‘Antiscorbutick and Catholick Medicines’ at the end. Small hole in F1 with loss of three letters, edges and margins rather browned or stained, fore-edge and lower corner of title a little chipped, dampstain in fore-edge margin towards the end. Good modern sheep antique (by Bernard Middleton). Bookplate of John Yudkin (1910–1995, nutritionist).
£900
The second of three ‘second editions’ all in the same year and, according to the ‘Chronological List’ in Stewart & Guthrie, the first English monograph on scurvy. It was evidently a work of interest, going through nine editions in five years. The first edition appeared the year before with only 94 pages.
“Throughout his career Maynwaring took an interest in the cure of scurvy, which he regarded as a disease endemic in northern countries. He made and sold his own remedies against scurvy and recommended oranges and lemons as antidotes against this disease. He condemned tobacco smoking as one of the causes of scurvy” (ODNB). Recent research has confirmed that the body’s supply of vitamin C is depleted by smoking.
Maynwaringe was born in 1627/8 at Gravesend and graduated MB at Cambridge aged seventeen. He travelled to America and Dublin, where he was created MD, before settling in London. He was an advocate of chemical medicine, defending chemistry by arguing that it was part of ancient learning. Wing M150 recording only two copies (Cambridge & McGill). COPAC does not record any copies. Stewart & Guthrie (eds.), Lind’s Treatise on Scurvy (1953).
The Function of Breathing Established
98. MAYOW, John. Tractatus Duo quorum prior agit De Respiratione: alter De Rachitide. Oxon [Oxford]: Excudebat Hen. Hall, impensis Ric. Davis. 1669.
Small 8vo, 1 leaf, 108 pages, 1 leaf (blank), 2 folding engraved plates. Separate title-page to the second tract dated 1668. Contemporary sheep, panelled in blind, nicely rebacked by Middleton with red morocco label on spine. Very good copy.
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Provenance: donation inscription dated 1714 on front free endpaper from John Hutton M.D. (physician to William III and physician-general to the army) by the library of the presbytery of Dumfries, to which Hutton had given all his books prior to his death in 1712; bookplate of John Yudkin (1910–1995, nutritionist).
£3600
FIRST EDITION, second issue with a cancel title-page dated 1669, one year after the first issue, of Mayow’s first book. “In October 1667 Hooke and Lower performed a pulmonary insufflation procedure whereby an incision was made in the lungs of a dog while it was kept alive by air being artificially pumped into the lungs with bellows. Hooke [G&M 916] believed this to be a crucial demonstration disproving the mechanical theory of respiration in favour of a chemical particulate theory that something extractable from the air powered the normal motions of respiration. The success of this brutal experiment in London inspired Mayow to write an essay on the mechanism of respiration, to which he coupled a medical essay on rickets…
“In the tract on respiration Mayow described perfectly its mechanism, with the movement of ribs and diaphragm. He understood that the lungs were moved by the action of the diaphragm, and suggested that the internal and external intercostal muscles brought about the inspiration of air, which then expanded naturally into the enlarged space produced in the chest cavity. The function of breathing was not to cause the lungs to expand or to cool the blood, as William Harvey had thought, but to bring air in contact with the blood, to which it gave up its ‘nitrum hoc aerium’ (‘aerial nitre’)…” (from a long passage in ODNB).
The second tract is on rickets, Mayow being the third English writer on the disease, and, next to Glisson, the most often quoted. He provides a clear clinical description of the disease and explains the curving of bones as impaired growth of muscles failing to grow in the same proportion as the bones to which they were attached.
Wing M1536. Still, History of Paediatrics, pp. 227–229. Fulton, Two Oxford physiologists, 105, noting the rarity of both issues.
99. [MEISSNER, Friedrich Ludwig.] Der neue Fussarzt oder Anweisung, die Leichdornen, Frostbeulen, Geschwulst der Füsse, Nagelschwüre, Fussschweisse, Klumpfüsse, &c. zu heilen, nebst einer ausführlichen Abhandlung für Fussreisende über die nöthige Pflege, Bekleidung und Abwartung der Füsse auf Reisen. Von Dr. Ludwig Meiner. Leipzig: bei G.H.F. Hartmann. 1824.
Small 8vo, pp. viii, 104. Contemporary marbled boards and roan spine with red and green morocco labels. Spine a little chipped, but a nice copy. Bookplate of J. Colin Dagnall, the historian of chiropody (see below).
£220
FIRST EDITION of an early German contribution to the literature of chiropody, perhaps the first original German work on the subject. The book is not noticed by J.C. Dagnall, “The history of chiropodial literature”, in The Chiropodist, 1965. Meissner (1796–1860), an obstetrician, gynaecologist and paediatrician, wrote on a variety of subjects, for some of which he used a pseudonym, as here (see Hirsch).
Description of Babbage’s Analytical Engine
Translated by Ada Lovelace
100. MENABREA, Luigi Federico. Sketch of the Analytical Engine invented by Charles Babbage Esq. [In:] Scientific Memoirs, selected from the Transactions of Foreign Academies of Science and Learned Societies, edited by Richard Taylor, vol. III, pp. 667–731 and folding table. London: Printed by Richard and John E. Taylor… 1843. 5 volumes, 8vo. Contemporary half calf, spines ruled in gilt with green and red morocco labels, marbled sides, red edges. Bindings a little rubbed and worn at extremities, short crack at top of two joints, spine of vol. 2 cracked. 19th century library label (cancelled) and shelf label on front pastedowns, blind stamp at foot of title with cancellation stamp on verso. A very clean set. Menabrea’s paper is contained in volume III, as above.
£38,000
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FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH of the first and “most complete contemporary account in English of the intended design and operation of the first programmable digital computer” (Hook & Norman), Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, the direct ancestor of the twentieth century computer. It was translated by Augusta Ada King, countess of Lovelace, with notes that are much longer than the translation and incorporate the first published computer programme (although that term was not used). This paper is the most important paper on digital computing before modern times.
In 1840 Babbage went to Turin to give a presentation on his Analytical Engine. The military engineer Luigi Menabrea was in the audience and wrote a description of it which was published two years later. It is that paper which Ada Lovelace translated here, but in addition “she added extensive notes to Menabrea’s paper which contain not only what is regarded as one of the earliest computer programs but also prescient comments about the future of such an engine, which have stood the test of time. Her correspondence with Babbage about the time that she was preparing this work for publication elaborates further on her idea of what would now be termed a program, and, moreover, places it in the context of its possible use. Thus on 10 July 1843 she suggested to him: ‘I want to put in something about Bernoulli’s Number, in one of my Notes, as an example of how an explicit function, may be worked out by the engine, without having been worked out by human head and hands first’ ” (ODNB).
These volumes comprise a complete set of the first series of Taylor’s Scientific Memoirs. It did not have a large circulation and the second series was divided into two subjects running to only one volume each.
Hook & Norman, Origins of cyberspace, 61.
101. MICHELL, John. A Treatise of Artificial Magnets; in which is shewn an easy and expeditious method of making them, superior to the best natural ones: and also, a way of improving the natural ones, and of changing or converting their poles. Directions are likewise given for making the mariner’s needles in the best form, and for touching them most advantageously, &c. Cambridge: Printed by J. Bentham… 1750.
8vo, 1 leaf, 81 pages, 1 folding engraved plate. Contemporary half calf, spine gilt, red morocco label. Title slightly soiled, but a nice copy. Armorial bookplate of Sir Richard Bempde Johnstone, Bart. £850
FIRST EDITION. An important book by the eminent English scientist John Michell (1724–1793), in which he described the method of making artificial magnets by “double touch”, and enunciated the law of variation of magnetic action according to the inverse squares of distances. The formulation of this law is found on p. 19 and is reproduced in the Wheeler Gift catalogue (I, p. 188). Michell also did very important work in astronomy, invented the torsion balance for measuring very small forces, and may be said to have founded scientific seismology. Wheeler Gift 358. Ekelöf 320. Mottelay p. 191. With this copy is bound John Hill’s A Dissertation on Royal Societies (London, 1750), 48 pages.
Mirrors
102. MIRAMI, Rafael. Compendiosa introduttione alla prima parte della Specularia, cioè della scienza de gli specchi. Opera nova, nella quale brevemente, e con facil modo si discorreintorno agli specchi e si rende la cagione, di tutte i loro miraculosi effetti… [And:] Tavole della prima parte della specularia… In Ferrara: Appresso gli heredi di Francesco Rossi, & Paolo Tortorino… 1582.
2 parts in 1 volume, 4to, pp. (viii), 70, (2) blank, (4); 23, (1) blank. Separate title-page to the Tavole, woodcut device on both title-pages and last page, woodcut initials. Twentieth century half vellum. Small repair to lower corner of first three leaves, but a clean copy. Bookplate of David L. DiLaura. £7800
SOLE EDITION of the only known publication by Mirami, who identifies himself as a Jewish physician and mathematician from Ferrara. However, the lack of documentation about his life suggests that the name may be a pseudonym.
“Rafael Mirami’s Compendiosa is a late Renaissance consideration of the utility and properties of mirrors. It is the product of the transition from the catoptrical optics of antiquity and its attempt to produce images from distant objects, to the development of dioptrical optics in the early 17th century that led to the telescope… Mirami includes elaborate Tavole that give a schema of types of mirrors, their properties, their uses, and the types and place of images they produce” (DiLaura). The work is unusual and interesting for combining a scientific interest in mirrors and optics with poetry; verses from Dante, Petrarch, and Horace, intended to support his arguments, are interspersed in the text, which even ends with his own sonnet.
DiLaura, Bibliotheca Opticoria, 37.
103. MONRO, Alexander (secundus). The Structure and Physiology of Fishes explained, and compared with those of man and other animals. Edinburgh: Printed for Charles Elliot,…and G.G.J. and J. Robinson, London, 1785.
Large folio, 128 pages, and 50 engraved plates on 44 sheets (including 12 folding). Short tear in the fold of plate I (very large and folding), plate number of plate XX shaved, clean cut across plate XXIV without loss. Early 19th century green half calf, marbled paper sides rubbed and with some areas of the marbling missing, joints and corners rubbed, small crack at foot of lower joint, but a very good copy.
£1450
FIRST EDITION, issue with London in the imprint. “The first important Edinburgh textbook on comparative anatomy, a subject that had been recently introduced to their London students by the Hunters” (DSB). The fine life-sized plates, from actual dissections, are mostly from drawings by Andrew Fyfe or Thomas Donaldson and are printed on thick paper of excellent quality.
Cole Library 1660. Taylor, The Monro Collection, M172 (issue without London in the imprint). Casey Wood p. 470: “A treatise of much value.”
104. MONRO, Donald. An Essay on the Dropsy and its different species. The second edition. London: Printed for D. Wilson, and T. Durham... 1756. 12mo, pp. (xii), 216. Contemporary half vellum. Two tears without loss in upper corner of F5, otherwise a very fine copy.
£450
Second edition in English of Monro’s doctoral thesis De hydrope (1753). Monro was “probably the first person to suggest that some cases of dropsy were due to disease of a heart valve” (Comrie, History of Scottish Medicine). The book deals with dropsy of every part of the body, and classifies it as diffuse or encysted.
Bedford catalogue 765 (the third edition of 1765, the first book listed under the heading “Early Works on Dropsy and Hydrothorax”).
Modern Pathology
105. MORGAGNI, Giovanni Battista. De Sedibus, at Causis Morborum per Anatomen Indagatis libri quinque. Dissectiones, et animadversiones, nunc primum editas complectuntur propermodum innumeras, medicis, chirurgicis, anatomicis profuturas. Multiplex praefixus est index rerum, & nominum accuratissimus. Venetiis [Venice]: Ex Typographia Remondiniana, 1761.
2 volumes in 1, folio, pp. xcvi, 298, (2) blank; 452, fine engraved frontispiece portrait in volume 1. Half-title in volume 1, title-page of volume 1 in red and black, engraved vignettes on both titles. Contemporary vellum, red morocco label (chipped) on spine, red edges. Some occasional light foxing, a few small wormholes in the gutter of first few leaves, a fine copy. Early signature in fore-edge margin of title, bookplates of G.P.C. and Arthur Lyons.
£7500
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FIRST EDITION of the founding work of modern pathological anatomy. Morgagni was the first to systematically and thoroughly correlate clinical details with accurate post mortem findings.
“Morgagni regarded the body as a collection of harmonious parts, many deep in the recesses of body and discernible only through the microscope. He reasoned that failure of one of these parts was both the seat and cause of disease, and anatomical investigation would reveal the point of failure. Morgagni therefore set about compiling case histories and analysing them. His methodical analysis and classification of symptoms resulted in systematising a branch of medicine hitherto studied in isolation and without method…
“There is hardly a phase of pathological anatomy observable with the naked eye which Morgagni did not cover in these two folio volumes. In about 700 necropsies, mostly by Morgagni himself, there are excellent descriptions of cancers, particularly of the pancreas, stomach and rectum, and of renal calculi, cirrhosis of the liver, atrophied kidneys, and an unmistakable description of typhoid fever. It is, though, his contribution to the pathology of the vascular system at which his special pathology excels. Apoplexy was a subject of particular interest, and his descriptions of aneurysms are outstanding” (NP in the Grolier One Hundred (Medicine)). He recorded an authentic case of angina pectoris, and gave classic descriptions of mitral stenosis and heart-block. He gave reports of epilepsy and psychiatric disorders. He is remembered eponymously for Morgagni’s tubercle, ventricle and foramen singulare.
Printing and the Mind of Man 206; Dibner, Heralds of Science, 125; Lilly, Notable Medical Books, 125; Grolier One Hundred (Medicine), 46; G&M 2276, 2734 and 2885. Long, History of pathology, pp. 67–72. Hunter & Macalpine, pp. 441–444. Willius & Keys, Cardiac Classics, pp. 173–187; etc. One of the most important books in the history of medicine.
A Fascinating Literary Style
106. MORGAGNI, Giovanni Battista. The Seats and Causes of Diseases investigated by anatomy; in five books, containing a great variety of dissections, with remarks. To which are added very accurate and copious indexes of the principal things and names therein contained. Translated from the Latin…by Benjamin Alexander. London: Printed for A. Millar… 1769.
3 volumes, 4to, pp. (vi), (ix)–xxxii, 868; vi, 770; vi, 604, (152) index. Original boards (somewhat darkened, spines and a few corners worn), uncut and partly unopened, modern cloth box. Provenance: Signature of W(?). Cooke of Brentford, 1810, in upper corner of titles; bookplate and stamps on endpapers of Durham College of Medicine; bookplate of Robert Mowbray (MD, 1914–1986), whose wonderful library was sold in Edinburgh after his death.
£3800
FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH of the previous item, and the only complete translation into English. The book contains no illustrations, but Morgagni had the ability to describe his findings with a “fascinating literary style” (Long) which makes his book “one of the most readable of all medical books” (Lilly).
This edition is rarer than the original Latin edition of 1761.
107. MORRIS, William M. ‘Self-Propulsion’ and the rise and progress of “Velocipedes” and “Manumotive Carriages.” With numerous illustrations and instructions for learning to ride the bicycle and tricycle. Published by request. Cardiff and Pontypridd: Morris Bros., [n.d., not before 1882].
Small 8vo, 1 leaf (blank), pp. (ii), ii, 91, (1), 1 leaf (blank), and 6 lithographed plates. No title-page, the printed cover acting as the title-page and the first leaf is blank. With 27 illustrations (6 plates and 21 woodcuts in the text). Original grey printed boards (slightly worn and soiled, a few tears in spine), a nice copy. Small stamp of A. Mollison in upper corner of contents page.
£1800
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FIRST EDITION. This book, by a manufacturer of bicycles, includes a detailed history of the subject, with descriptions of current models of bicycles and tricycles, including static bicycles for winter use, now called exercise bikes, and even electrically-powered bicycles. The second part is on the advantages of cycling, and the third part has practical hints and instructions for learning to ride. At the end are details of bicycles, tricycles and other equipment available from Morris Brothers. William Morgan Morris was one of three brothers who ran the Morris Brothers’ bicycle factory, founded in 1872, probably by the brothers’ father. They began manufacturing velocipedes but the range soon expanded to include tricycles, ‘ordinaries’ and ‘sociables’. Rare, with no copies listed in COPAC.
First Description of Anorexia Nervosa
108. MORTON, Richard. Phthisiologia seu exercitationes de Phthisi tribus libris comprehensae. Totumque opus variis historiis illustratum. Londini: Impensis Samuelis Smith,… 1689.
8vo, pp. (xxiv), 411, 1 leaf (errata), 1 leaf (blank). Imprimatur leaf before the title, title within rules. Contemporary unlettered calf (extremities rubbed, two small chips and a wormhole in foot of spine, minor damage to lower edge of rear endpaper), a fine and clean copy. Signature of John Slinger, 1895, on inside of front board and on front endpapers.
£1500
FIRST EDITION. G&M 3216. The first important book on pulmonary tuberculosis, and the first description of anorexia nervosa (in the first chapter) with the characteristic triad of loss of appetite, amenorrhoea, and extreme wasting without lassitude. Morton’s book involved “the first application of the principles of pathology to the study of pulmonary tuberculosis. Morton showed that the formation of tubercles is a necessary part of the development of this lung disease, and pointed out that the tubercles often heal spontaneously. He noted the enlargement of the tracheal and bronchial glands in cases of pulmonary tuberculosis” (G&M).
Wing M2831. Major, Classic descriptions of disease, pp. 61–63. Norman Catalogue 1555. Osler 3459. Osler, “The ‘Phthisiologia’ of Richard Morton”, in Med. Libr. and Hist. Journal, II, pp. 1–7, 1904. Hunter & Macalpine pp. 230–232.
Classic of Experimental Physiology
109. MÜLLER, Johannes. Ueber die phantastischen Gesichtserscheinungen. Eine physiologische Untersuchung mit einer physiologischen Urkunde des Aristoteles über den Traum, den Philosophen und Aerzten gewidmet. Coblenz: bei Jacob Hölscher. 1826. 8vo, pp. x, 117, (1). Nineteenth century half cloth. Title guarded in inner margin, paper lightly browned and some spotting (mostly light) throughout. Bookplate of Adam Kramer Stricker.
£1200
FIRST EDITION of Müller’s second book on specific nerve energies. In his Zur vergleichenden Physiologie des Gesichtssinnes, published earlier in the same year, he had stated his law of specific energies, that each sensory system responds to various stimuli only in a fixed, characteristic way — the eye with a sensation of light, the ear with a sensation of sounds, and so forth.
“In the present book he showed that the sensory system of the eye not only reacts to external optical stimuli but also can be excited by interior stimuli arising from organic malfunction, lingering mental images, or the play of the imagination… Müller demonstrated that optical perceptions can arise without an adequate external stimulus. When the stimulus is mistakenly assumed to have originated outside the body, the result — depending on the situation — is the reporting of religious or magical visions, or the seeing of ghosts” (DSB). Müller’s observations on hallucinations, clairvoyance, and dreams in this book are important in the history of psychiatry.
G&M 1456. Grolier, 100 Books Famous in Science, 76. See Fulton, Selected Readings in the History of Physiology, pp. 289–291 (according to Fulton, Müller’s law was first stated in the present book). Rothschuh, Geschichte der Physiologie, p. 115. Norman catalogue 1567.
110. MÜLLER, Johannes. De Glandularum Secernentium Structura Penitiori earumque prima formatione in homine atque animalibus. Lipsiae [Leipzig]: Sumtibus Leopoldi Vossii, 1830.
Folio, 2 leaves, pp. (3)–131, and 17 engraved plates with numerous figures by J. F. Schröter mostly from drawings by the author and J. Henle. A little foxing (more so on the plates). Modern buckram. Very faint library stamp on the title and plates.
£2200
FIRST EDITION of the most important and pioneering histological work by the great German physiologist Johannes Müller (1801–1858), in which he described the microscopic anatomy of a large series of secreting glands.
In 1830 Müller was appointed full professor at the University of Bonn, a position he held until his death. In the same year “he published his studies on the emergence and structure of the glands; in the course of this research he employed anatomical preparations, injections, and especially the microscope. The book considerably fostered the advance of embryology and histology. In it he demonstrated that glands are invaginations of the covering membranes that are closed at one end and that blood vessels do not open into the glandular ducts but lie like capillaries in the walls of these ducts” (DSB).
G&M 538. Bracegirdle, A History of Microtechnique, p. 313: “Müller had written his book on glands as early as 1830…”
First English Book on the Germ Theory – Association Copy 111. N[EEDHAM], M[archamont]. Medela Medicinæ. A plea for the free profession, and a renovation of the art of physick,… London: Printed for Richard Lownds… 1665.
Small 8vo, pp. (xxiv), 516 (i.e. 524, page nos. 193–200 duplicated). Licence leaf before the title, title within double ruled border. Contemporary calf (nicely rebacked and tips of corners repaired, endpapers replaced), a very good, clean copy. Early signature of James Master on licence leaf; early stamp of the [Royal] College of Physicians on title; old armorial bookplate on front pastedown. £3800
FIRST EDITION. G&M 2529: “Needham was one of the earliest – if not the first – Englishman to write on the germ theory. In his book he included an account of Kircher’s experiments with the microscope.” This is the second book on infection and immunology listed by G&M, the first (and the only other one before the 19th century) being that by Fracastoro who first promulgated the germ theory of infection. In Chapters III & IV Needham discusses infection, including Fracastoro’s theory, and in Chapter V Kircher’s De Peste and the use of the microscope, concluding that disease was spread by “such little invisible contagious bodies as these, carried through the air”.
This rare book was written as an attack on the College of Physicians (whose copy this was). It is not noticed in the histories of Bulloch, Nordenskiöld, Penso or Foster. Wing N397. This was apparently the only edition.
112. NANNONI, Lorenzo. De Similarium Partium Humanum Corpus Constituentium Regeneratione Dissertatio. Additionibus exornata, et Latine reddita a Mauro Sartio Russiensi. Mediolani [Milan:] Ex Typographia Josephi Marelli, 1782.
8vo, 48 pages. Original marbled wrappers, spine defective. A few small marks and slight dustsoiling, but a very good copy.
£295
FIRST SEPARATE EDITION, second issue, of Nannoni’s dissertation on the regeneration of nerves, muscles and tendons after excision. Nannoni was the son of the famous surgeon Angelo Nannoni, and a renowned surgeon in his own right. The first issue appeared the year before. Zeis Index 266, citing the edition included in Roemer’s Delectus opusculorum, 1791, and aware of this separate printing only through de Renzi’s Storia de la medicina in Italia (1845). Not in NUC; one copy (NLM) in RLIN.
113. NICHOLSON, William. A Dictionary of Chemistry, exhibiting the present state of the theory and practice of that science, its application to natural philosophy, the processes of manufactures, metallurgy, and numerous other arts dependent on the properties and habitudes of bodies, in the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms. London: Printed for G.G. and J. Robinson, 1795.
2 volumes, 4to, pp. viii, 576; (ii), 577–1132, 4 engraved plates (2 of them double-page tables). Contemporary half diced russia, flat spines gilt with a coronet and the initial N in the lowest compartment, marbled sides and endpapers (top of spine chipped, short crack in foot of upper joint and tips of lower corners worn of vol. 1). Part of vol. 2 printed on different paper and slightly browned (as usual), dampstain at the bottom of the last 20 leaves and rear endpapers of vol. 1, but a nice set.
£1800
FIRST EDITION of Nicholson’s large dictionary of chemistry, “the first dictionary of chemistry by an Englishman, superseding the English translation of Macquer’s dictionary (London, 1771) by the Scot James Keir. Although preferring the antiphlogistic theory of Lavoisier, Nicholson also presents the phlogistic alternative. This work is important for containing one of the earliest English versions of the table of the new chemical nomenclature from the Méthode de nomenclature chimique (Paris, 1787) by Lavoisier et al.” (Neville). It includes chapters on ores, zinc, iron, lead and other metals as well as on metals in general.
Cole 974. Neville II, p. 227. Duveen & Klickstein 137.
114. PARÉ, Ambroise. The Workes… Translated out of Latine and compared with the French. by Th. Johnson. London: Printed by Th. Cotes and R. Young, 1634.
Folio, 7 leaves, 1173 pages [i.e. 1093, page numbers 489–552, 653–660 and 1084–1092 are omitted], 11 leaves (index). With the engraved title-page incorporating a portrait of Paré, and 323 woodcut illustrations in the text. First three leaves lightly and carefully cleaned (see below), outer corners of last leaf restored, otherwise a very clean and well preserved copy. Contemporary calf, nicely rebacked with red and black morocco labels.
Provenance: early inscription “Ex Libris Dom. Fr. Taylor” on rear endpaper; collation marks on rear endpapers of Bernard Quaritch Ltd and John Howell Books, who sold it to Warren G. Atwood; Haskell F. Norman; Arthur E. Lyons.
£24,500
FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH of the collected works of Ambroise Paré, the greatest surgeon of the sixteenth century. “Malgaigne calls it [i.e., the collected edition] the first surgical treatise since Guy de Chauliac; the latter was still writing under Arabian influence, while Paré brought in the new experimental spirit of the Renaissance” (Doe, p. 104). Paré’s authority extended not only to surgery, neurosurgery and orthopaedic surgery, but also to anatomy, obstetrics, toxicology, gout, venereal diseases, plague, teratology, the distillation and use of medicines, and medical jurisprudence. The book was easily the largest and most comprehensive work in the canon of surgical literature in English up to that time (and for some time to come), and is one of the most influential, and appealing, books in the whole of early English surgical and medical literature.
A curious, and as yet unexplained, peculiarity concerns the second and third leaves of this edition, C1–2, the dedication and “To the Reader”. It is now usual for these leaves, which comprise the complete gathering C, to be either mutilated, restored, inserted from another copy, or missing altogether. The dedication leaf is known in two states: the first, and presumed earlier, is to Sir Edward Herbert, as in this copy; in the second, his title is altered to Lord Herbert of Cherbury. STC 19189. See G&M 59 and 5565. Doe, Bibliography, 51. Russell, British Anatomy, 646. Zimmerman & Veit, pp. 179–192. Norman catalogue 1640 (this copy).
115. PARÉ, Ambroise. The Workes…translated out of Latine and compared with the French by Tho: Johnson. Whereunto are added three Tractates out of Adrianus Spigelius of the veines, arteries, & nerves, with large figures. London: Printed by Richard Cotes, and Willi: Du-gard, and are to be sold by John Clarke… 1649.
Folio, pp. xxii, 787, (8), (iv), (52), 1 leaf (errata). Including the engraved title, 3 leaves of woodcuts in the second part, and numerous woodcuts in the text. Separate title-page to the tract by Spigelius. Title a little soiled and creased near the fore-edge, leaf kkk misbound after p. 384, the 3 leaves of woodcuts folded in at head and/or foot (being larger than the book) with small loss to foot of two, tear without loss in I6, Aa6 and Bb1, a few leaves lightly browned (as usual). Contemporary calf (spine and tips of two corners very neatly repaired), unlettered, no pastedown endpapers. Generally an excellent copy.
£12,500
Second edition in English of the previous item.
Wing P349. See G&M 5565 (first collected edition of 1575). Doe, Bibliography, 52. The anatomical treatise of Spigelius, on the anatomy of the blood vessels and nerves, appears here for the first time in English.
The Definitive Edition
116. PARÉ, Ambroise. Oeuvres Complètes. Revues et collationnées sur toutes les éditions, avec les variantes; ornées de 217 planches et du portrait de l’auteur; accompagnées de notes historiques et critiques, et précédées d’une introduction…par J.-F. Malgaigne. Paris: Chez J.-B. Baillière… 1840 (–1841).
3 volumes, large 8vo, pp. cccli, 459; (iv), 811; (iv), xxxii, 878, 2 portrait plates in volume 1, and 217 text figures. Half-titles. Some gatherings very lightly browned. Contemporary green half morocco, marbled sides and endpapers, t.e.g., other edges uncut, a handsome set. Bookplates of Adrien Lachenal (1849–1918), Swiss statesman and freemason.
£1250
The best edition of the works of Ambroise Paré (1510–1590), edited by J.F. Malgaigne, who added an excellent history of Western surgery from the sixth to the seventeenth centuries, which was published separately in 1840 (G&M 5790), and a study of Paré’s life and times. G&M 59. Doe, Bibliography, 45.
Translated by Culpeper
117. PARTLIZ, Simeon. A New Method of Physick: or, a short view of Paracelsus and Galen’s practice; in 3. treatises. I. Opening the nature of physick and alchymy. II. Shewing what things are requisite to a physitian and alchymist. III. Containing an harmonical systeme of physick. Written in Latin by Simeon Partlicius… Translated into English by Nicholas Culpeper, Gent… London: Printed by Peter Cole in Leaden-Hall, and are to be sold…by S. Howes, J. Garfield, and R. Westbrook. 1654.
Small 8vo, 10 leaves, 548 pages [i.e. 348, pagination jumps from 191 to 392], engraved frontispiece portrait of Culpeper. Signatures jump from Q to U but pagination is continuous. With the longitudinal title (a cancel pasted to the stub of B1), title within typographical border (shaved off at lower edge), typographical head- and tailpieces. Contemporary sheep, ruled in blind, unlettered, red edges. Paper flaw at lower corner of X1 with loss of one word and several letters, margins cut close in several places, signature P a little browned, otherwise a lovely copy.
£2500
FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH of Medici systematis harmonici (Frankfurt, 1625) by the German physician, mathematician, astronomer and hermeticist Simeon Partliz von Spitzberg, who was born in Triesch (now Trest in the Czech Republic) circa 1590, and probably died in Trencín (now in Slovakia) circa 1640.
This was one of Culpeper’s last works (he died in January 1654) and probably posthumous as the ODNB notes that “new works, mainly translations, continued to pour forth posthumously, mostly issued by Culpeper’s usual printer, Peter Cole, and with the blessing of his widow.” Concerned with medicine, hermeticism and astrology, Partliz’s book was very much in Culpeper’s traditional sphere of subjects. Wing P612. COPAC records 4 copies; most copies appear to have 9 preliminary leaves, so probably do not have the longitudinal title. Sudhoff, Bibliotheca Paracelsica, p. 578, noting that Partliz’s original did not mention Paracelsus on the title-page. This was the only English edition.
118. PASTEUR, L[ouis]. Études sur La Bière, ses maladies, causes qui les provoquent, procédé pour la rendre inaltérable, avec une théorie nouvelle de la fermentation. Paris: Gauthier-Villars,… 1876.
8vo, pp. viii, 387, 4 (adverts), 12 plates, figures in the text. Contemporary cloth-backed marbled boards. A little foxing on the first and last few leaves, otherwise a fine copy.
£600
FIRST EDITION. G&M 2485: “Pasteur resumed his studies on fermentation in 1876, and in this book takes into account the developments in this field since his previous publications on the subject. He described a new and perfect method of preparing pure yeast and acknowledged that a limited quantity of oxygen was important for brewing.”
Sparrow, Milestones of Science, 158. Norman catalogue 1658. Neville II, p. 272: “…contains discoveries of fundamental importance in the sciences of biochemistry and bacteriology.”
Classic Early Work on Optics
119. PECHAM, John. Perspectiva Communis. [Edited by Luca Gaurico.] [Colophon:] Impressum…Venetiis [Venice]: per Jo. Baptistam Sessam… 1504.
Small folio, 20 leaves. With the final errata leaf, large woodcut on title depicting a master and his students and with Sessa’s cat and mouse device beneath, some fine woodcut initials, and 77 woodcut diagrams in the margins. Small repair to upper outer corner of last leaf. Modern limp vellum with ties, in a black morocco solander box. A fine and large copy. Bookplate of David L. DiLaura.
£15,500
A handsome early edition of this classic work on optics, which was the most influential text on the subject for three hundred years. Pecham endeavoured to reconcile all the available authorities — Aristotle, Euclid, Augustine, al-Kindi, Ibn Rushd, Grosseteste, Bacon, but most of all, Ibn al-Haytham or Alhazen. This is the first edition to be edited by Luca Gaurico (1476–1558), the expatriate Neapolitan scholar who also edited the works of Archimedes and Ptolemy.
“The work on which Pecham’s fame has chiefly rested is the Perspectiva Communis, probably written between 1277 and 1279 during Pecham’s professorship at the papal curia. In the first book Pecham discussed the propagation of light and color, the anatomy and physiology of the eye, the act of visual perception, physical requirements for vision, the psychology of vision, and the errors of direct vision. In Book II he discussed vision by reflected rays and presented a careful and sophisticated analysis of image formation by reflection. Book III was devoted to the phenomena of refraction, the rainbow, and the Milky Way…
“Pecham’s optical system included significantly more than a theory of direct vision. He briefly discussed the doctrine of species; treated at length the propagation of rays; and developed a theory to explain how solar radiation, when passing through noncircular apertures, gives rise to circular images. He expressed the full law of reflection and applied it to image formation by plane, spherical, cylindrical, and conical mirrors; in this analysis he revealed an implicit understanding of the nature of the focal point of a concave mirror…
“The Perspectiva Communis was the most widely used of all optical texts from the early fourteenth until the close of the sixteenth century, and it remains today the best index of what was known to the scientific community in general on the subject” (DSB).
Probably the third or fourth edition (an inferior edition was published in Leipzig also in 1504); there were two incunable editions. DiLaura, Bibliotheca Opticoria, 8: “This…edition is particularly interesting and important.” See Stillwell, The Awakening Interest in Science, II, 205.
120. PECHAM, John. Perspectiva tribus libris succinctis denuo correcta, et figuris illustrata, per Pascasium Hamellium mathematicum Regium. Lutetiae [Paris]: Apud Aegidium Gourbinum… 1556.
4to, 4 leaves (the last bank), 43 leaves. Without the final blank leaf l4 but with 18 other blank leaves bound in at the end. Woodcut device on title, two woodcut initials and headpieces, numerous woodcut diagrams, text printed in italics. 17th century English speckled calf, spine gilt in compartments and with red morocco label. A nice copy. Signature of W. Patten 1557 in upper corner of title, undoubtedly
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the first owner of this copy and possibly William Patten (d. 1598), author and government official; bookplates of the Turner Collection at Keele University, and David L. DiLaura.
£4200
Pecham’s textbook of optics, the principal work on the subject from when it was written in 1279 until the end of the sixteenth century, is here edited with a commentary by Pascal Duhamel, who added new figures for the text. Duhamel, who was mathematician to the French king, used Georg Hartmann’s edition of 1542 which became the standard.
Borelli’s Copy
121. PECHAM, John. Perspectiva communis libri tres. Iam postremò correcti ac figuris illustrati. Colonia Agrippinae [Cologne]: Apud Haeredes Arnoldi Birkmanni. 1580. 4to, ff. 47, (1) blank. Oval woodcut Jesuit device on title, woodcut initial and headpiece, diagrams in the text. Old vellum (edges and spine repaired), new pastedowns and front free endpaper. Giovanni Battista Borelli’s copy, inscribed on the title “Ex lib. Borelli” and the price paid in the same(?) hand.
A late edition of this classic work on optics (see the previous two items).
£3950
“This is the second edition of Pascal DuHamel’s slight editing of, and commentary on, Georg Hartmann’s edition of Peckham’s optics textbook, with some additional woodcut figures in the text. This is essentially a reprinting of the edition of 1556, save that it does not include Hartmann’s preface of 1542. The periodic appearance of Peckham’s Perspectiva Communis demonstrates its continued use as a textbook on optics in the Renaissance up to the time of Kepler” (DiLaura).
DiLaura, Bibliotheca Opticoria, 35.
122. PECHAM, John. I tre libri della Perspettiva Commvne dell’illustriss. et reverendiss. Monsig. Gioanni Arcivescovo Cantuariense; nuovamente tradotti nella lingua italiana, & accresciuti di figure & annotationi da Gio. Paolo Gallucci… In Venetia [Venice]: Appresso gli Heredi di Giovanni Varisco. 1593.
8vo, (viii) + 48 leaves. Woodcut device on title, woodcut diagrams in the text. Light foxing throughout. 18th century French mottled calf (joints rubbed, head of spine missing, foot of spine and tips of corners worn, upper joint cracking at foot), marbled endpapers, red edges. Early signature of Jo. Ant. Girardi and the name Fontanini on title; bookplates of Charles Verzon and David L. DiLaura. £3200
FIRST EDITION IN ITALIAN of Pecham’s classic work on optics, translated and with an added commentary by Giovanni Paolo Gallucci using Hartmann’s edition of 1542. This was also the first translation into any vernacular language and made Pecham’s work available to a wider audience.
“Gallucci’s glosses feature examples taken from everyday life… The long section on mirrors discusses the reflections of colors, the angles of incidence, transparency, the function of lead on glass mirrors, mirrors made of iron or diamond, spherical or plain or shaped like a column, and the appearance of images on broken mirrors” (DiLaura).
Pecham’s book was written just over three hundred years before this translation appeared, and was the most influential text on the subject throughout that time. DiLaura, Bibliotheca Opticoria, 44. Pecham is identified as “Archbishop John of Canterbury” in the title.
123. PECQUET, Jean. Experimenta Nova Anatomica, quibus incognitum hactenus chyli receptaculum, & ab eo per thoracem in ramos usque subclavios Vasa Lactea deteguntur. Ejusdem Dissertatio Anatomica, de circulatione sanguinis, & chyli motu. Hardervici [Harderwyck]: Apud Joannem Tollium. Juxta exemplar Parisiis impressum, 1651. 12mo, pp. (xxii), 204, 6 engraved plates (1 folding). Early signature of Francis Richard on title. Contemporary vellum. Foot of spine rubbed and cracked, upper joint cracked at top, short (1 cm.) tear in fold of plate, otherwise a very good copy.
£1800
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Second edition, in the same year as the first. The discovery of the thoracic duct. “In his experiments with live dogs Pecquet discovered the thoracic duct and cisterna chylii, which he named the receptaculum chylii. He correctly described the termination of the chyliferous vessels (Aselli’s ‘lacteal veins’) in the cisterna, confuting the erroneous notion that the vessels ended in the liver; he also described the junction of the thoracic duct at the union of the jugular and subclavial veins. In a rare early instance of nearly simultaneous triple independent discovery, the thoracic duct was also discovered independently by the Swedish physician Olof Rudbeck and by Thomas Bartholin” (Norman Catalogue 1676). The volume also contains Pecquet’s dissertation on the circulation of the blood, and letters to Pecquet from Auzout and Mersenne. See G&M 1095 and Grolier One Hundred (Medicine) 28A (the Paris edition). The first edition is properly described as a very rare book, but this second edition is probably even rarer. The editions of 1654 and 1661 are more usually seen.
124. PETIT, Jean Louis. Traité des Maladies Chirurgicales, et des opérations qui leur conviennent. Ouvrage posthume… Mis au jour par M. Lesne. Paris: Chez P. Fr. Didot le jeune,… 1774.
3 volumes, 8vo, 1 leaf, pp. (viii), civ, 407; 1 leaf, pp. viii, 560; 1 leaf, pp. viii, 343, 142, (2)blank, engraved frontispiece portrait and 90 folding engraved plates. Half-title in each volume. Ink blot on p. 89 of vol. 2, paper flaw in A3 of the supplement affecting the woodcut headpiece but without loss. Contemporary mottled sheep, spines gilt (but a little rubbed, and two spines worn at head), red morocco labels, tips of lower corners worn, but a very good set.
£2200
FIRST EDITION, with the rare supplement. Petit was the greatest French surgeon after Paré, and this book, published posthumously, is one of the major works of surgery of the eighteenth century. It summarised the whole of French surgical practice. Petit invented the screw tourniquet and devised numerous successful surgical procedures, including herniotomy without opening the sac, and improved the circular method of amputation. Volume 2 includes a long chapter on hernia. He also recorded, in volume 1, the first successful operation for mastoiditis, and demonstrated the mechanism of the occlusion of arteries in wounds. The supplement, which comprises material found too late to be incorporated in the main text, is principally on head wounds. The plates comprise a veritable atlas of instruments of the period.
G&M 3357 (mastoiditis) and 3577 (“Petit’s hernia” and “triangle”, named after him).
125. PHILLIPS, Nigel. Diving and Underwater Technology 1405–1830. A narrative bibliography. [Chilbolton:] Printed for the author, 2018.
2 volumes, 4to, 894 text pages, with frontispiece and 289 other illustrations (many in colour). Cloth, gilt. New.
£150
FIRST EDITION. This history and bibliography of diving and underwater technology recounts the development of diving and diving apparatus from the beginning of technological writing in the West to when it became possible to provide a continuous supply of air to a diver under water. It studies all the printed books and numerous manuscripts on the subject produced between 1405 and 1830, and reveals why the most important innovations occurred when they did. Up to about 1730 most of the principal entries include the complete text either in the original English or in an English translation, together with any illustrations. Profusely illustrated and with detailed bibliographies of all the sources, this is an essential work for technology libraries, collectors and historians.
Second Earliest Printed Work on the Eye
126. [PIERRE DE LIMOGES.] Liber de Oculo Morali. [No place, printer or date; Augsburg: Anton Sorg, c. 1477.]
Folio, 61 leaves (of 62, lacking the initial blank). Without signatures or pagination, 39 lines plus headline, incipit on f. 9 preceded by 7 leaves containing a table of contents by Mathias Farinator, large capital supplied in red and text rubricated on f. 9. Bound in half russia by Bauzonnet between
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126 Pierre de Limoges
1831 and 1840, spine ruled in gilt (joints rubbed and cracked at ends), marbled sides and endpapers. A few leaves with short early marginalia, old library stamp on flyleaf. Very fine copy with wide margins.
£24,500
Second edition of “the second earliest printed work on the eye, Grassus’s De oculis (1474) being the first” (Becker). It contains a description of the eye, together with a brief account of eye diseases and their treatment.
Written in the late 13th century, De Oculo Morali was produced for preachers in the hope of making homilies interesting and relevant by making morals parallels to the principal aspects of Perspectiva — the medieval study encompassing the eye, vision, and optics. Perspectiva originated with De Aspectibus, the Latin translation of Katib al-Manazir by the great Arabic scholar known in the West as Alhazen. Much of the natural philosophy of vision in the Kitab al-Manazir found its way into De Oculo Morali, via De Aspectibus, becoming similes for the moral life.
Although the author was given in the book as John Pecham (Joannis Pithsani), Archbishop of Canterbury, the treatise was written by Pierre de Limoges, a physician, astronomer and cleric who helped to found the Sorbonne at the end of the thirteenth century. The work was first printed by Anton Sorg not after August 1476.
Klebs p. 243 (reference only, under Peckham). DiLaura, Bibliotheca Opticoria, 1. Becker catalogue 222 (Italian edition, under Lacepiera). Wellcome I, 5028. Sarton II, p. 1029.
127. [PIERRE DE LIMOGES.] Liber de Oculo Morali. [Colophon:] Impressum Venetiis [Venice]: per Joannem Hertzog [Johannes Hamman], April 1496.
Small 8vo, 64 unnumbered leaves. Printed in double columns, 35 lines, title-page with large woodcut. Near-contemporary wooden boards with remains of a bind-stamped morocco spine on upper cover, rebacked, new endpapers, clasp missing. A clean copy. Bookplate of M. Novati.
£12,500
Probably the third edition (there were three editions published in Venice in 1496) of “the second earliest printed work on the eye, Grassus’s De oculis (1474) being the first” (Becker). See the previous item.
“The purpose of the De oculo morali is purely ethical but it contains a description of the eye, together with a brief account of eye diseases and their treatment” (Sarton II, p. 1029). On the titlepage is a woodcut of a monk teaching, and pointing to his eye.
Klebs p. 243 (reference only, under Peckham). DiLaura, Bibliotheca Opticoria, 6. Becker catalogue 222 (Italian edition, under Lacepiera). Wellcome I, 5029 (Italian edition).
128. PORTA, Giambattista della. De Refractione Optices Parte. Libri novem. 1 De refractione, & eius accidentibus. 2 De pilae crystallinae refractione. 3 De oculorum partium anatome... 4 De visione. 5 De visionis accidentibus. 6 Cur binis oculis rem unam cernamus. 7 De his, quae intra oculum fiunt... 8 De specillis. 9 De coloribus ex refractione... Neapoli [Naples]: Apud Jo. Jacobum Carlinum, & Antonium Pacem, 1593. 4to, 6 leaves, 230 pages, 1 leaf (imprimatur). Including the inserted dedication leaf and its conjugate blank. Woodcut device on title, woodcut headpieces and initials, diagrams in the text. Some foxing, and paper of some gatherings browned, several small holes in blank areas of title, small hole in 10 leaves with loss of a few letters in 3 leaves. Eighteenth century vellum-backed boards, spine lettered in manuscript. Two early signatures on title deleted; signature of R.S. Creed, 1955, on front endpaper.
£3950
FIRST EDITION. “Porta’s contribution to the theory and practice of Renaissance optics is found in book XVII of the Magiae of 1589…[expanded into] the De refractione of 1593. He did not invent the camera obscura, but he is the first to report adding a concave lens to the aperture. He also juxtaposed concave and convex lenses and reports various experiments with them… His comparison of the lens in the camera obscura to the pupil in the human eye did provide an easily understandable demonstration that the source of visual images lay outside the eye as well as outside the darkened room. He thus ended on a popular level an age-old controversy. Porta’s work
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lies conceptually and chronologically between Risner’s Opticae Thesaurus of 1572 and Kepler’s Ad Vitellionem paralipomena of 1604” (DSB).
Parkinson, Breakthroughs, 1593. DiLaura, Bibliotheca Opticoria, 45. Osler 3720, noting that Haeser calls Porta the founder of modern optics. Not in the Becker catalogue, which has the Magiae naturalis. Albert, Norton & Hurtes 1831: “…one of the principle founders of modern optics.” The leaf of dedication to Octavio Pisani, “Adolescenti erudito”, inserted between the title and A2, is not found in all copies.
129. PORTAL, Paul. La Pratique des Accouchemens soutenue d’un grand nombre d’observations. A Paris: De l’Imprimerie de Gabriel Martin, et se vend chez l’Auteur, ruë Saint Martin... 1685.
8vo, pp. (xx), 368, fine engraved frontispiece portrait of the author holding a copy of his book, and 8 engraved plates. Signature removed from upper corner of title by bleaching, single small wormhole in lower blank corner almost throughout, plates a little browned, a few minor marks. Contemporary mottled calf, rebacked using the original morocco label, spine gilt.
£1600
FIRST EDITION. Portal was the first to appreciate the situation in placenta praevia, and had a clear insight into the actual findings and management of that entity, which is probably his most important contribution to the science of midwifery. He also demonstrated that version could be done with one foot, and taught that face presentation usually ran a normal course. Portal was a pupil of Mauriceau, and worked with him in the Hôtel Dieu. This important and eminently practical treatise was based on his personal experiences and observations. The plates depict abnormal and monstrous foetuses.
G&M 6148. See Cutter & Viets pp. 81–83.
130. POUTEAU, Claude. Mélanges de Chirurgie. A Lyon: Chez Geoffroy Regnault,...1760. 8vo, pp. xii, 526, 1 leaf (list of plates, listing only two), and 5 folding engraved plates on 3 sheets (two plates are numbered 1 and two numbered 2, plates 2 and 3 are on the same sheet). Leaves E4 and H6 are cancels. Contemporary mottled calf, spine gilt in compartments, marbled endpapers. Early inscription on title deleted, short crack at top on upper joint, tiny (1 cm.) hole in leather of lower joint, tiny chip in top of spine, otherwise a fine copy.
£700
FIRST EDITION. Pouteau studied surgery in Paris under Petit and Le Dran, but returned to his native Lyon to practise. He became famous for his improvements in the operation of lithotomy his record with perineal lithotomy was probably never exceeded, achieving only 2.5 percent mortality in 120 consecutive cases. Contrary to most other surgeons, Pouteau used the lithotome almost exclusively, devising a modification of his own, illustrated on the last plate.
This collection of papers and observations in surgery, one of only three published works of Pouteau, includes chapters on cauterisation, head wounds, the stone, amputation and bandaging, etc.
131. PRIESTLEY, Joseph. The History and Present State of discoveries relating to Vision, Light, and Colours. London: Printed for J. Johnson… 1772.
2 volumes, 4to, pp. v, (viii), xvi, 422; 1 leaf, pp. 423–812, (12), folding engraved biographical chart (frontispiece) and 24 stilted plates. Contemporary tree calf, nicely rebacked, edges slightly darkened. Last two leaves of subscribers misbound before the first two, a little foxing and offsetting (two gatherings in vol. 2 more spotted), but an excellent set. Signature of Stephen Freeman, 1799, in each volume.
£2200
FIRST EDITION. The first history of theories of vision, light, and colour, containing a thorough review of virtually all the significant work in the field. It also contains substantial chapters on optical instruments (the telescope, microscope, etc.). “Although the History of Optics contains much useful information, it was considerably less successful than the History of Electricity. Until recently optics had not attracted substantial historical interest, and although Priestley’s History of Optics
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had but one English edition and a translation into German, it remained the only English work on the subject for a hundred and fifty years and the only one in any language for over fifty” (DSB). Parkinson, Breakthroughs, 1772. Crook S/479 (with incorrect plate count). This copy has an additional list of 28 subscribers on the verso of the errata leaf, including several from Jamaica.
132. RANSOME, J. Allen. The Implements of Agriculture. London: J. Ridgway… 1843. 8vo, pp. xi, 276. With numerous illustrations in the text. Original brown cloth (a little rubbed and worn at ends of spine), yellow endpapers. Some small marks throughout but a very good copy. Presentation copy, inscribed on the title-page “Wm Crosskill with the author’s respects” (William Crosskill, 1800–1888, iron founder who produced bells, railings, lamp posts and agricultural implements); bookplate of the Royal Institution of Cornwall).
£250
FIRST EDITION. “This was the most important book on its subject published in the mid-nineteenth century” (ODNB).
The firm of Ransome’s was established by Robert Ransome (1753–1830) in 1789. The author of the present work, James Allen Ransome (1806–1875), was his grandson under whose direction the business assumed huge proportions. “The small brass foundry established by the elder Robert Ransome in the latter half of the eighteenth century had, by the 1850s, become one of Britain’s leading agricultural engineering firms, employing more than 1000 workers. From producing and sharpening ploughs and other agricultural implements, the firm had diversified widely, especially into railway equipment. It was one of the first companies to build cast-iron bridges and later it also became renowned for its lawnmowers” (ibid).
Although Ransome’s made the first steam thresher in 1841 it is not mentioned in this book, but one on Lord Ducie’s farm is described at length.
The presentee of this copy invented a patent clod crusher, described and illustrated on pp. 96–97, a nice association.
133. [READ, Alexander.] Microcosmographia [in Greek] or, A Description of the Body of Man. With the practise of chirurgery, and the use of three and fifty instruments. By artificiall figures representing the members, and fit termes expressing the same. Set forth either to pleasure or to profit those who are addicted to this study. [London:] Printed by Tho. Cotes, and are to be sold by Michael Sparke… 1634.
2 parts in 1 volume, 8vo, (5) + 2–154 leaves; 3 leaves + pp. 117, (1). Without the initial blank leaf. Two woodcuts on the title, and 154 pages of woodcut anatomical illustrations on versos in the first part (some full-page, some with multiple figures); the second part with separate title-page and 55 woodcut illustrations (many with multiple figures) of surgical instruments and appliances. Good calf antique, red morocco label on spine, red edges. Lower corners of first few leaves a little worn, old repair to fore-edge margin of G4, some minor foxing and browning, but an exceptional copy of this book which was usually read to bits. Inscribed in upper corner of title “Edgar B. Truman [probably Edgar Beckett Truman M.D., 1839?–1902], Nottingam 1871, from J.W.”
£4250
Second edition of the first English dissection manual, based on the anatomical text-book of Helkiah Crooke.
“The first comprehensive text-book in the Vesalian manner to be compiled by a British author in the new century was the Microcosmographia [in Greek] of Helkiah Crooke published in 1615. This excellent work was compiled from the work of André du Laurens, Caspar Bauhin and others but the author acknowledges his debt to these men. The book was well illustrated, the plates being based both directly and indirectly on Vesalius, with some from Valverde… Moreover it had the distinction of being issued in abridged form, for Jaggard the printer persuaded Alexander Read to supply a brief text to the Crooke woodcuts which was published under the title … [Greek] or a description of the body of man (1616 and 1634). This was Crooke in pocket form so that it could be taken to the dissecting room and the illustrations compared with dissections; this use was, in fact, expressed in the preface” (Russell, British Anatomy, p. xxii).
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William Harvey’s great book on the circulation of the blood had been published six years previously, but Keynes (Life of Harvey, pp. 318-319) notes that Read completely ignores Harvey in his Manual of Anatomy, also published in 1634. In the present book, however, Read copies Fabricius’s famous plates of the veins in the forearm (f. 50, also used by Harvey) and the valves in the veins of the leg (f. 53), but stops short of mentioning the circulation.
The first edition of 1616 is extremely rare, and because of their very nature, copies of both editions tend to be in very poor condition. This copy is in remarkably good condition. The second part, on surgical instruments, did not appear in the first edition, and is translated from Paré.
STC 20783. Russell 682. Doe, Bibliography of...Paré, 75. Wellcome I, 1688 (under Crooke).
The Science of Methodical Brewing
134. RICHARDSON, John. The Philosophical Principles of the science of Brewing; containing theoretic hints on an improved practice of brewing malt-liquors; and statistical estimates of the materials for brewing, or a treatise on the application and use of the saccharometer… York: Printed by A. Ward, for G.G. and J. Robinson, London [and 4 others in Hull, Edinburgh, Dublin and Cork]. 1788. 8vo, pp. xxiv, 1 leaf (errata), pp. 347, 4 leaves (index), 1 folding engraved plate of apparatus. Signed by the author on the last page of text. Contemporary calf (a few scuffs and tears in the leather, joints and tips of corners neatly repaired). A very good, clean copy. Small bookplate of Max Salomon.
£1800
FIRST EDITION, incorporating his two earlier works with additional matter. “A pioneer in bringing scientific measurement to brewing, he published two major books, Theoretic Hints on an Improved Practice of Brewing Malt-Liquors (1777) and Statical Estimates of the Materials for Brewing (1784)… His most influential work was Statical Estimates, in which he demonstrated how the hydrometer could be applied in brewing practice. Though he was not the first to use this instrument in brewing, it was he who coined the term saccharometer to describe a hydrometer calibrated in a scale of his own devising, which when used in conjunction with a thermometer allowed accurate measurement of the amount of fermentable matter in wort, in units of direct relevance to the brewer. His work alerted brewers to the economic importance of the hydrometer in providing a means of obtaining uniformity of strength of the subsequent beer, and allowed informed choice of the best yielding malts at a time when increases in the scale of production in the major London breweries were beginning to make accurate measurement imperative. By 1800 many of these breweries had adopted Richardson’s instrument and he was destined to become regarded as the father of methodical brewing” (ODNB).
135. RITCHIE, Robert. The Farm Engineer: a treatise on barn machinery, particularly on the application of steam and other motive powers to the thrashing machine… Glasgow…: Blackie & Son, 1849.
8vo, pp. xvi, 272, and 23 lithographed plates (including 2 extending) from drawings by the author, + 8 pages of Blackie’s adverts at the end. Half-title, numerous illustrations in the text (1 full-page). Last two plates a little browned and spotted and with dampstain in two margins. Original green blind-stamped cloth (a little marked and rubbed), yellow endpapers. Early signature of ‘Bolton’ at top of title-page, bookplate of the Royal Institution of Cornwall.
£250
FIRST EDITION. An early work on the application of steam power to farm machinery. The first quarter of the book is on the history of threshing and the various early threshing machines, described by Marshall (Landed Property, 1804, pp. 163–4) as “the most valuable discovery, in machines of agriculture, which has been made for centuries past” as threshing by hand was hard, dirty, slow and inefficient work. Ritchie, a civil engineer, devotes the greater part of this book and most of the plates to the application of steam power to threshing. He notes that “a very serviceable high pressure portable steam engine …has recently been introduced at one or two farms near Edinburgh” (p. 272). The first portable steam thresher had been made eight years previously.
136. ROBERTS, Isaac. Four photographs of stars and nebulae. 1887–1889.
Four actual photographs, each approximately 30 x 24 cm, mounted on card 43 x 30 cm with letterpress details at the head of each. Foxing on the mounts, corner of one mount slightly damaged. Provenance: Birr Castle Estate, Ireland, seat of the third earl of Rosse (1800–1867), who built the largest astronomical telescope in world, and the fourth earl (1840–1908), an equally distinguished astronomer.
£2200
The four photographs are:
Photograph of stars in Cygnus. Taken at Maghull [Liverpool] on the 14th August, 1887, with 20-in. reflector, and exposure of 60 minutes.
Photograph of the Dumb-Bell Nebula, M. 27 Vulpeculae. Exposure 3 hours, 3rd October, 1888. Enlarged 5 times. Maghull.
Photograph of the great nebula in Andromeda Taken at Maghull, on the 29th December, 1888, with 20-inch reflector, and exposure of 4 hours.
Photograph of the nebulae. M. 81, 82 and a nebulous star in Ursa Major. Exposure 31 ⁄2 hours, 31st March 1889. Enlarged 5 times. Maghull.
The headings also include co-ordinates for the subjects and references in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
“In 1883, however, he began to experiment with stellar photography and eventually obtained a twenty-inch reflector, with a 100-inch focal length, from Howard Grubb of Dublin… In January 1886 Roberts announced to the Royal Astronomical Society that during the previous year he had taken 200 photographs of stars that might be measured for position and also long-exposure photographs of the Orion and Andromeda nebulae and of the Pleiades cluster. Later in 1886 he exhibited a 3-hour exposure of the Pleiades that revealed the astonishing and unsuspected nebulosity that surrounds these stars. In 1887 he attended the Conference of Astronomers in Paris; this conference planned an international photographic chart of the sky, and thereafter Roberts concentrated his own efforts on objects of special interest” (DSB).
“In March, 1885, Sir Howard Grubb mounted for Dr. Isaac Roberts at Maghull, near Liverpool…a silver-on-glass reflector of twenty inches aperture, constructed expressly for use in celestial photography. A series of nebula pictures, obtained with this fine instrument, have proved highly instructive both as to the structure and extent of these wonderful objects” (Clerke, A Popular History of Astronomy, p. 409).
Roberts’ astronomical photography earned him the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1895, and a crater on the far side of the moon was jointly named in his honour.
Military Engineers
137. ROYAL ENGINEERS. [1] Rules for Military Mining, according to the practice of the Royal Engineer Establishment at Chatham. Reprinted by order of Colonel H. Sandham, R.E., Director. Chatham: Printed by George H. Windeyer… [n.d., c. 1853]. [Bound with:] [2] Exercise of the Cylindrical Pontoon, according to the practice of the Royal Engineer Establishment, Chatham. Reprinted by order of Colonel H. Sandham, R.E., Director, 1858. Chatham: Printed by A. Etherington… [And:] [3] Questions and Answers of Sapping, according to the practice of the Royal Engineer Establishment at Chatham. 1859. Chatham: Royal Engineer Establishment, Brompton Barracks. [And:] [4] PASLEY, Lt.-Gen. Sir Charles. A simple practical Treatise on Field Fortification, for the use of the regimental schools of the Royal Engineer Establishment. Reprinted 1860. Colonel H. Sandham,…Director. Chatham: Royal Engineer Establishment… [And:] [5] JONES, Sgt.-Maj. John. The Iron-Band Gabion and its applicability to various military field purposes. Chatham: Printed by A.T. Fordham… 1860. [And:] [6] BURGOYNE, Sir John Fox. Memoranda on the Defence of Posts. [Chatham(?):] 1857. [And:] [7] The Method of Forming a Bridge of Casks, according to the practice of the Royal Engineer Establishment, Chatham. Chatham: Printed by A. Etherington… 1857.
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7 works in 1 volume, 8vo and small 8vo, paper slightly browned, some minor soiling and fingermarks, two tears without loss in the title of [7]. Modern half calf antique.
£950
1. 8vo, pp. iv, (iii), 99. Text illustrations. No copy in COPAC, which shows one copy of each of two other editions.
2. 8vo, 27 pages, 4 plates. Not in COPAC (1 copy of the 1852 printing).
3. 8vo, 24 pages, and 10 lithographed plates on 5 sheets. Not in COPAC.
4. 8vo, 25 pages, errata slip. Not in COPAC (5 copies of the 1823 edition).
5. 8vo, 12 pages, and 5 lithographed plates. 1 copy in COPAC (also 2 copies of the 1862 edition).
6. Small 8vo, 1 leaf + 6 pages. 1 copy in COPAC (also 3 copies of the 1862 edition).
7. Small 8vo, 3 leaves, pp. (5)–35, 5 stilted plates. Not in COPAC.
A collection of extremely rare booklets printed in Chatham for the exclusive use of the Royal Engineers. In addition to the seven listed above is a 2-page work, 16mo, pasted to the inside of a card cover entitled “New Pontoon Exercise (Lieut.-Colonel Blanchard’s)”. Probably printed in very small numbers, and intended for use in the field, it is hardly surprising that few examples of these highly individual and detailed manuals have survived. In 1855, during the period of the publication of these works, the Royal Engineers and the Royal Sappers and Miners were united into one corps.
138. SAKOSKY, [Albert]. Coup d’oeil sur les imperfections de la chaussure, et les incommodités qui en proviennent, suivi de l’examen d’un procédé ingénieux qui a l’avantage de corriger les unes et de faire disparaître ou prévenir les autres. A Paris: Chez l’auteur…de l’imprimerie de Didot Jeune. 1811.
8vo, pp. xvi, 86, (2) blank. Some light foxing. Later blue roan. Bookplates of Walter Seelig and J. Colin Dagnall, historians of chiropody.
£300
FIRST EDITION of a very rare monograph on the anatomy and function of the foot, on the effect of footwear, and on the ways of altering and correcting footwear to ensure a better fit. The last part describes shoe stretchers, for which Sakosky was granted an imperial patent.
139. SAKOSKY, [Albert]. Formes et Embouchoirs Mécaniques, propres à allonger, élargier et agrandir la chaussure, suivant les incommodités ou la conformation du pied; et pour lesquels l’auteur a obtenu un brevet d’invention. A Paris: Chez l’auteur… 1814.
8vo, pp. 15, (1). Modern half calf by Sangorski & Sutcliffe, the original blue sugar-paper wrappers bound in. Faint dampstain in upper inner corners. Bookplate of J. Colin Dagnall, historian of chiropody.
£350
FIRST EDITION(?) of Sakosky’s monograph on shoe stretchers, for which he had been granted a patent by the Emperor Napoleon. Sakosky signs himself as bootmaker to the King of Prussia on the title-page. Very rare: not in Copac, WorldCat, Bibliothèque Nationale, etc.
140. SASTAGO, Conde de. Descripcion de los Canales Imperial de Aragon, i Real de Tauste… Zaragoza: Por Francisco Magallon. 1796.
Folio, 5 leaves (half-title with imprint, engraved title, engraved portrait of the dedicatees Charles III and his Queen, 2 leaves of dedication), pp. (v)–x, 174, and 41 stilted engraved plates (numbered to 38 + 3 unnumbered, including a long folding map, 10 double-page and folding, and 1 long and folding). With some fine engraved pictorial head- and tailpieces and initials. Contemporary tree sheep, flat spine gilt with red and green morocco labels, sides with gilt ropework borders, marbled endpapers. Some foxing, mostly minor but worse on the endpapers, otherwise a fine copy of a beautifully produced book printed on thick paper. Signed (by the author?) with the initial S on titlepage and last page. Armorial bookplate on front pastedown, stamp of C. Ezpeleta on title.
£3800
Sastago
FIRST EDITION. The Imperial Canal of Aragon was Spain’s first modern canal and one of the most important hydraulic works in Europe. It was begun in 1528 under the Emperor Charles V, but was largely built between 1776 and 1790.
It runs for 70 miles along the south bank of the river Ebro from El Bocal via Saragossa to Fuentes de Ebro, in north-east Spain. Originally intended for irrigational purposes it was finally built as a navigable waterway, and the Royal Canal of Tauste, which runs along the north bank of the river, supplied water to the district. It was intended to reach Sastago and connect with the Ebro, but that part was never built.
Most of this book is devoted to the construction of the canal, which at 9 feet deep and 69 feet wide was a considerable undertaking. There is a full description of its history and construction which included large embankments and cuttings, at least one major aqueduct, one dam, and even though its slope was only 80 cm per kilometre, three groups of locks, as well as docks and warehouses. There is also an account of its finances and administration.
This rare and beautiful book, by the Count of Sastago, is designated as volume 1; the second volume, probably intended as an account of the Canal Real de Tauste, was never published.
141. SCHOTT, Gaspar. Technica curiosa, sive mirabilia artis, libri XII. comprehensa; quibus varia experimenta, variaque technasmata pneumatica, hydraulica, hydrotechnica, mechanica, graphica, cyclometrica, chronometrica, automatica, cabalistica, aliaque artis arcana ac miracula, rara, curiosa, ingeniosa, magnamque partem nova & antehac inaudita, eruditi orbis utilitati, delectationi, disceptationique proponuntur… Nürnberg: Sumptibus Johannis Andreæ Endteri, & Wolfgangi Junioris Hæredum, Excudebat Jobus Hertz Typographus Herbipol., 1664.
2 parts in 1 volume, thick 4to, pp. (xl), 579; 1 leaf (sub-title to part 2), pp. 583–1044, (16), engraved title and 60 engraved plates (many folding, including the plate “Ad Iconismus XVI” in part 1, and counting XVII/ XVIII in part 2 as one plate). Half-title, title printed title in red and black with the engraved portrait of the dedicatee on the verso, and his engraved arms on p. (x), the last leaf is a list of Schott’s published works. Some foxing (mostly light, but a few gatherings and plates heavily foxed). Contemporary mottled calf (rather rubbed, upper joint split but held by the cords). Bookplate of the Royal Meteorological Society. £4800 FIRST EDITION. This work is a huge compilation of scientific instruments, mechanical technology, and physical curiosities, in fact every aspect of anything technical that Schott could discover. Book I is devoted to Guericke’s work on the air pump and vacuum, Book II describes Boyle’s work on air pumps, Book IX gives the first description of a universal joint, and Book XI describes new mirrored optical instruments and Balthasar Conrad’s developments of the manufacture of spherical lenses. It includes a very full survey of the history of diving apparatus, a large section on clocks and clockwork, and much else. It gives a very comprehensive account of the state of technology up to the beginning of the Scientific Revolution. As with most of Schott’s works, it is richly illustrated. DiLaura, Bibliotheca Opticoria, 132. Baillie, Clocks and Watches, 1664. Norman catalogue 1911.
Famous Surgical Picture Book
142. SCHULTES (SCULTETUS), Joannes. , seu…Armamentarium Chirurgicum XLIII. Tabulis æri elegantissime incisis, nec ante hac visis, exornatum. Opus posthumum,…in quo tot, tam veterum ac recentiorum instrumenta ab authore correcta, quàm noviter ab ipso inventa… Ulmæ Suevorum [Ulm]: Typis & impensis Balthasari Kühnen… 1655.
Folio, 1 leaf, pp. 10, 132, (3), and 43 fine engraved copperplates, most with numerous figures. Title in red and black, woodcut ornaments. Contemporary vellum, stamped and ruled in blind, spine lettered in ink, blue edges, missing silk ties. Later bookplate and an old stamp deleted at foot of title, a few small stains on the title-page, a few wormholes in the vellum of the lower cover. Very fine copy.
£24,000
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141 Schott
FIRST EDITION, and the only edition in folio, of this beautiful surgical book in which the “most elegantly engraved copperplates” were intended to be not merely adjunct to the text but to be the entire raison d’être of the book, hence their mention at the very beginning of the title. In later editions the plates were considerably reduced in size, but they became the most renowned surgical illustrations of the seventeenth century.
At his death in 1645 Schultes ranked with Fabry von Hilden as the leading German surgeon of his era. He invented many devices and bandages, among them the many-tailed bandage named after him. The Armamentarium gives the best picture of seventeenth century surgical practice, illustrating such procedures as amputation of the breast, reduction of dislocations, forceps delivery, dental surgery, neurosurgery, etc. “It contains a complete catalogue of all known surgical instruments, of the methods of bandaging and splinting, and of a vast number of operative procedures, all of which are illustrated in graphic detail by means of numerous plates. In addition, it contains a large number of case reports which give evidence of [Schultes’s] daring and skill” (Zimmerman & Veith, pp. 249–253).
G&M 5571 (surgery) and 3669.1 (dentistry): “Scultetus describes and illustrates stomatological operations and includes fine illustrations of extraction instruments.” Norman catalogue 1912 (this was one of the few surgical books which Dr. Norman included in his collection).
143. SINCLAIR, George. The Principles of Astronomy and Navigation: or, a clear, short, yet full explanation, of all circles of the celestial, and terrestrial globes, and of their uses, being the whole doctrine of the sphere, and hypothesis to the phenomena of the Primum Mobile. To which is added a discovery of the secrets of nature, which are found in the mercurial-weather-glass, &c. As also a new proposal for buoying up a ship of any burden from the bottom of the sea. Edinburgh: Printed by the heir of Andrew Anderson… 1688.
Small 8vo, 3 parts in 1 volume with continuous signatures, pp. (viii), 85, (1) blank, 49, (1) blank, 14. Separate title-page to the second part, without the final blank leaf as in other copies seen. Misprint ‘Carpenter’ for ‘Co-partner’ on the last p. 3 corrected probably in the author’s or printer’s hand. Titlepage and last page a little browned and soiled. Contemporary panelled sheep, rather rubbed but nicely rebacked and restored, spine unlettered, initials AC on sides beside a central device, later endpapers.
£3200
FIRST EDITION of the last published work of George Sinclair, formerly professor of philosophy at Glasgow and one of the first experimental scientists in Scotland.
The first and largest part of this book is an introduction to astronomy and the rotation and composition of the world. The second part is on the use of the barometer, in which Sinclair was a pioneer of its use to establish altitudes and the depths of mines. Sinclair graduated his barometer at a time when few makers calibrated their instruments in a measurable scale. This is also the first book cited by Middleton (History of the Barometer) to use the now familiar terms Rain, Change, Fair, etc.
In 1665 Sinclair had been involved in the use of a diving bell to salvage a wreck off the Scottish coast, and in 1669 he published the most important account of the diving bell of the seventeenth century in his Ars Nova Gravitatis et Levitatis. In the third part of the present book he returns to the subject with a discussion about how sunken ships can be raised with the use of caissons (which he calls ‘Arks’) filled with air while under water.
Phillips, Diving and Underwater Technology, pp. 335–340.
“I was at Last Successful in Securing a Copy”
144. SMITH, William. Observations on the Utility, Form and Management of Water Meadows, and the draining and irrigating of peat bogs, with an account of Prisley Bog, and other extraordinary improvements, conducted for His Grace the Duke of Bedford, Thomas William Coke, Esq. M.P. and others. Norwich: Printed by R.M. Bacon…and sold by Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme… 1806.
8vo, 2 leaves, 121 pages, 1 leaf (blank), and 2 folding engraved plates from drawings by Smith. Woodcut tailpiece vignettes. A little foxing on the plates but a fine copy. 19th century blue boards with pale paper spine (spine repaired, front endpaper a bit stained), uncut edges.
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FIRST EDITION of William Smith’s first book, in which he is described on the title-page as “Engineer and Mineralogist.”
£1200
“Smith had first undertaken land drainage work for the Canal Company chairman James Stephens (c.1748–1816). By late 1799 he was much in demand as land drainer around Bath, a demand augmented by the wet autumn of that year. In 1800, in Wiltshire, he drained the Tytherton estates of Thomas Crook, in the process discovering another new stratum (the Kellaways Rock) to add to his order. Smith’s work here was inspected by the landowner Thomas William Coke (1752–1842) [the dedicatee of this book], who subsequently invited Smith to Holkham, Norfolk. In summer 1801 Coke introduced Smith to Francis, duke of Bedford (1765–1802), then trying to drain some of his Woburn estates with the assistance of his land steward John Farey (1766–1826). Smith and Farey met in October 1801 and Smith’s results greatly impressed Farey with their novelty and economic importance” (ODNB).
There are two issues of this book; this copy is of the first issue with the printer’s name and Longman’s name in the imprint. The first plate has the words “Containing 9 Acres.”
Eyles, William Smith (1769–1839): a bibliography, 4. Skempton 1361. Sheppard, William Smith, pp. 112–117, with a detailed description of the book and the delightful note: “After repeated advertising in the second-hand book trade journals and searching in innumerable channels, I was at last successful in securing a copy.”
145. SMITH, William. Stratigraphical System of Organized Fossils, with reference to the specimens of the original geological collection in the British Museum: explaining their state of preservation and their use in identifying the British strata. London: Printed for E. Williams… 1817.
Large 4to, 2 leaves, pp. (iii)–xi, 118, 1 leaf (blank), 2 leaves (“Observations on Echini”), 2 folding tables (one engraved, one letterpress, both partially hand-coloured). Very small tear in fore-edge margin of title repaired, small repair to lower blank corner of D4, engraved folding table with reinforcements to folds on the back, some light foxing and browning throughout. Good modern red half morocco antique, spine gilt in compartments, marbled sides, t.e.g., other edges uncut, with both original printed wrappers (rubbed and a little soiled, restored and laid down) bound in.
£15,000
SOLE EDITION. “A description of British fossils arranged by strata, from the London Clay down to the Marlstone of Lias, based on the enormous fossil collection that Smith sold to the British Museum in 1815. A proposed ‘Part II’ advertised on the contents page, was never published” (Norman). This was one of two major publications proposed by Smith, but a lack of subscribers meant that neither was completed. The other work was his Strata Identified by Organized Fossils, published simultaneously with the present book over four years, in which Smith introduced the concept of geological strata. “This made palaeontology a fundamental part of geology. It was now beginning to emerge that geological time could no longer tolerate the shackles of biblical chronology. It was in the ‘testimony of the rocks’ and not in the Book of Genesis that the history of the earth must be sought” (PMM 274, on Smith’s geological map of 1815).
Norman catalogue 1960. Ward & Carozzi 2075. Only 250 copies were published, and the book is consequently rare.
146. TAYLER, Joseph N., Captain. Plans for the Formation of Harbours of Refuge, improvement of rivers and sea ports: with suggestions for ameliorating the condition of seamen, preventing shipwreck, and miscellaneous matter. Plymouth: Printed and published by D. May (Plymouth Journal-Office)… 1840.
4to, pp. (vi), 66, 1 leaf (index), and 6 lithographed or engraved plates (3 folding, 1 bound as a frontispiece). Without the advertisement leaf for Tayler’s Naval Tactics which may or may not be conjugate. Paper very slightly browned. Contemporary half calf (a little worn, nicely rebacked in the 20th century preserving the original backstrip and black morocco label). Armorial bookplate. £600
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SOLE EDITION. Joseph Tayler (1785–1864) had an active career in the navy, accepting the rank of rear-admiral in retirement. He made various inventions and took out several patents including one for improvements to steam vessels, and another in partnership with the civil engineer William Henry Smith for improvements in breakwaters, beacons, and sound alarms. In 1838 he took out a patent for ‘a certain method of abating or lessening the shock or force of the waves’ and improvements upon his original plan which involved the construction of a floating breakwater, a model of which was shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851.
In this book Tayler was concerned with improvements principally to the harbours of Penzance and Plymouth which are exposed to Atlantic storms. The plates include a chart of the Mounts Bay and the Scilly Isles, Penzance and Plymouth harbours, and a section of his floating breakwater.
Not in Skempton, but the Institution of Civil Engineers has a copy.
Early Hospital Reforms
147. TENON, [Jacques René]. Mémoires sur les Hôpitaux de Paris. A Paris: De l’imprimerie de Ph.-D. Pierres… 1788.
4to, pp. (viii), lxxiv, 472, 15 folding engraved plates (including 1 very large) of hospital plans, 2 folding tables. Faint trace of a small library stamp erased from the title and dedication. Contemporary mottled sheep, spine gilt in compartments (head of spine and tips of corners nicely restored), green morocco label, marbled endpapers. A few unobtrusive scuff marks on the lower cover, but a nice, clean copy. £1500 FIRST EDITION. G&M 1600. Tenon’s major monograph on the hospitals of Paris, in which he described the appalling conditions prevailing there, resulted in rapid reforms being made. He had wanted to achieve this for forty years, and when the King commissioned him to report on the hospitals of Paris, he did so in great detail. Contemporary with Howard in England, Tenon was the most important of the early French hospital reformers, and was instrumental in founding a special hospital for children.
See Garrison p. 400. Norman catalogue 2061.
Medical Malpractice
148. THOMSON, Thomas. The Case of the Right Honourable Thomas Winnington, Esq. London: Printed by T. Gardner… 1746. [Bound with:]
DOUGLAS, William. A Letter to Dr Thomson, in answer to the Case of the Right Honourable Thomas Winnington, Esq. London: Printed for J. Roberts in Warwick-Lane. 1746. [And:]
CAMPBELL, J. A Letter from J. Campbell, M.D. a physician in the country, to his friend in the town, occasion’d by the case of the Right Honourable Thomas Winington, Esq lately publish’d by Thomas Thomson, M.D. London: Printed for L. Raymond, and sold by A. More… 1746. [And:]
ANONYMOUS. The genuine Tryal of Dr. Nosmoth, a physician in Pekin; for the murder of the Mandarin Tonwin, Treasurer to the army of the emperor of China, before the great council of Mandarines. Taken in short hand by the linguist of the English factory. London: Printed for M. Cooper… 1746.
4 works in 1 volume, 8vo. 1: 24 pages, with a half-title. 2: 27 pages. 3: 42 (i.e. 24] pages, with a half-title. 4: 1 leaf, pp. 5–29. Blue sugar-paper over boards (modern binding using contemporary materials). Fine copies.
£200
Thomas Winnington (1696–1746), when not engaged with his political career, led a life of gallantry and was lavish in his expenditure, often as a result of his relationship with his mistress, Viscountess Townshend. “With a promising political career and vigorous social life ahead of him, Winnington died suddenly on 23 April 1746 as a result of excessive purging and bleeding by his doctor, Thomas Thomson, undertaken as treatment for a rheumatic fever which had begun earlier in the month.
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The notoriety of the case produced a number of pamphlets, from J. Campbell, William Douglas, and Thomson himself” (ODNB).
Of these, only the work by Douglas went to a second edition, in the same year. In the final one, Dr. Nosmoth is Thomas Thomson and Mandarin Tonwin is Thomas Winnington; unsurprisingly this one was published anonymously as accusing a physician of murder is strong stuff.
149. TRNKA Z KROVIC, Václav. Historia Cardialgiae omnis aevi observata medica continuens. Vindobonae [Vienna]: Litteris I.D. Hörlingianis. 1785.
8vo, 5 leaves, 390 pages, 7 leaves. Paper rather browned and foxed up to signature M (also signature Z) owing to a different paper stock, minor foxing elsewhere. Contemporary vellum, spine slightly discoloured and with two small holes. Small stamp of Gildemeester on front free endpaper.
£360
FIRST EDITION. This work contains an extensive survey of cardialgia, gastralgia, and all related subjects. It is particularly valuable for its historical sections, being one of the earliest books of its kind, in fact the sixth on the subject listed by Forbes (Manual of Select Medical Bibliography, 1835). Copies are variously bound, with the errata either at the beginning or at the end. A few copies (e.g. the Wellcome copy) have an advertisement leaf in German not present here.
150. TROTTER, Thomas. Observations on the Scurvy; with a review of the opinions lately advanced on that disease, and a new theory defended, on the approved method of cure, and the induction of pneumatic chemistry: being an attempt to investigate that principle in recent vegetable matter, which, alone, has been found effectual in the treatment of this singular disease; and from thence to deduce more certain means of prevention than have been adopted hitherto. II. edition. London: Printed for T. Longman…and J. Watts, Gosport, 1792.
8vo, 2 leaves, pp. xxxi, (i) blank, (33)-243, (1). Half-title. Margins very slightly browned. Good modern half calf antique.
£1200
Second edition. “In 1789 he was reappointed as a naval surgeon, and in 1792 he published the second edition of his book, which first introduced his new theory [that a lack of oxygen in the tissues caused scurvy]. His argument brought together two observations. One was that the spots and also the blood in scurvy had a black or livid color, and the other was that experiments had shown that oxygen was ‘the principle in nature which restored the florid color to the vital fluid.’ This suggested a lack of oxygen in scorbutic tissues. Second, the fruits and berries with a reputation for being strongly antiscorbutic were all acid… In 1800 Trotter reported that he had ‘succeeded in the cure of scurvy by the citric acid, in the concrete form, as prepared…after the manner of Scheele…” (Carpenter, The history of scurvy & vitamin C, pp. 88–91). Trotter would not allow his ship to sail unless it was fully stocked with vegetables, and he even went himself to buy vegetables and salads in the markets of Portsmouth.
See G&M 3716 (first edition of 1786).
A Classic of Paediatric Literature
151. UNDERWOOD, Michael. A Treatise on the Diseases of Children, with general directions for the management of infants from birth. A new edition, revised and enlarged. London: Printed for J. Mathews… 1789.
2 volumes, small 8vo, pp. xx, 339; xii, 296. Contemporary tree sheep, spines ruled in gilt and with red morocco labels. Three of the joints cracked but perfectly strong, crack in one spine and one gathering slightly sprung, foot of spines slightly worn; apart from these flaws a lovely, fresh copy in its original binding.
£2400
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Second edition, enlarged to two volumes. “Underwood laid the foundation of modern paediatrics. His work was superior to anything that had previously appeared and remained the most important book on the subject for sixty years.” The first edition included the first accounts of several disorders, including sclerema neonatorum (”Underwood’s disease”), and of apthae or thrush. It was in this second edition, though, that Underwood gave the first description of anterior poliomyelitis, and was seen to be the first to treat poliomyelitis as a separate entity; he also initiated the first discussion, in a book on children’s diseases, on congenital heart disease (vol. 1, p. 66), describing the “sloe-blue” colour of the face and neck. Underwood was also unusual in recommending that the operation for simple hare-lip be carried out as soon as twenty-four hours after the birth.
G&M 2734.4 and 4662 (this edition). See also G&M 4015, 5516 and 6326 (the first edition of 1784). Bick, Source Book of Orthopaedics, pp. 82 and 206. Fishbein & Salmonsen, A bibliography of infantile paralysis 1789–1949, 1. Ruhräh pp. 447–453. Still pp. 476–486: “… Underwood has pointed the way, and with the dawn of the nineteenth century, paediatrics, thanks to him, was in a better position to go forward than it had ever been before.”
Malthus
Proved Him Right
152. WALES, William. An Inquiry into the Present State of Population in England and Wales; and the proportion which the present number of inhabitants bears to the number at former periods. London: Printed by G. Bigg…for C. Nourse… 1781.
8vo, 1 leaf, 79 pages. Lacking the half-title. Tables in the text. Modern marbled wrappers.
£1100
FIRST EDITION. Wales took great interest in questions of population, and in the absence of a national census he instituted a series of inquiries of his own both in person and by letter, including an elaborate study of the mortality statistics of London and elsewhere, in a serious attempt to establish the population. He encountered so much opposition from the belief that the country, then at war with France, might been seen to be weaker than it really was that he could not carry his researches very far. He published his findings in the present work, in which he put forward his belief, contrary to the general opinion, that the population was increasing. Seventeen years later Malthus confirmed in his Essay on the Principle of Population that the population was increasing, and in geometric ratio unlike the food supply.
Wales was master of the Royal Mathematical School within Christ’s Hospital, and Captain Cook’s navigator on his second voyage.
153. WALL, Martin. Dissertations on Select Subjects in Chemistry and Medicine. Oxford: Printed for D. Prince and J. Cooke,… 1783.
8vo, pp. xvii, (i), 134, 1 leaf (paginated 133 on recto, verso blank), pp. 135–166, 1 leaf (advertisement for other books by Wall). Paper slightly browned as in other copies seen. Good modern quarter calf antique, marbled sides, green morocco label on spine.
£1200
FIRST EDITION, comprising three parts: the first is a history of chemistry, Wall’s inaugural dissertation presented when he took up the chair of chemistry at Oxford; the second deals with the origin of astrological and astronomical symbols, and their adoption to represent metallic elements; the third, beginning on p. 135, is on the prevalence of venereal disease in the South Sea Islands, and its connection with the early Pacific voyages by Europeans. Duveen p. 608. Cole 1327. Neville II, p. 602.
154. [WALMSLEY, Edward.] Physiognomical Portraits. One hundred distinguished characters, from undoubted originals, engraved in the line manner, by the most eminent British artists… London: Published for the Proprietor, by J. Major…R. Jennings…and R. Triphook… 1824.
2 volumes in 1, large 4to, engraved and letterpress title-pages, list of portraits, engraved dedication to the king, and 4 leaves of Address in two languages in volume 1, engraved and letterpress
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title-pages and list of portraits in volume 2, and 100 engraved portraits of eminent persons with accompanying biographical text (usually 2 leaves) in English and French without pagination or signatures. Contemporary green half morocco, spine richly gilt in compartments, marbled sides and endpapers (edges slightly worn), t.e.g., a handsome copy.
Provenance: signature of George Cubitt 1842 on front endpaper; Sudeley Castle, Gloucestershire.
£700
Large paper, quarto issue, published in parts between 1822 and 1824 (the engraved title-pages are dated 1822 and 1823). The very finely engraved portraits are proofs printed on India paper between 1821 and 1823 and laid on wove Whatman paper watermarked 1821. They were intended to capture the distinctive features of eminent persons and were engraved by Charles Pye, John T. Wedgwood, Cosmo Armstrong, E. F. and William Finden, Edward Smith, and others. The Address is signed “Edward Walmsley. March, 1824.”
This copy has additional engraved title-pages and an engraved dedication to the king, not present in all copies.
155. WARDROP, James. An Account of some Diseases of the Toes and Fingers, with observations on their treatment. From the fifth volume of the Medico-Chirurgical Transactions. Published by the Medical and Chirurgical Society of London. London: Printed by W. Bulmer and Co… 1814.
8vo, 16 pages, 1 stipple-engraved plate. Modern boards. Library inscription on title, and stamp on the plate. Bookplate of J. Colin Dagnall, the historian of chiropody.
£200
FIRST SEPARATE EDITION. On inflammation and ulceration of the nails and their surrounding soft parts, corns, and chilblains.
156. WATSON, William. Experiments and Observations tending to illustrate the Nature and Properties of Electricity. In one letter to Martin Folkes, Esq; President, and two to the Royal Society. London: Printed for C. Davis… 1746.
8vo, 1 leaf, pp. viii, (3)–59. Blue sugar-paper wrappers. Fine copy.
£250
FIRST SEPARATE EDITION of the first electrical publication of the scientist whom Priestley described as “the most active and interested person in the kingdom in everything related to electricity.” Watson was the first to observe the flash of light attending the discharge of a Leyden jar, and he provided the first demonstration of the passage of electricity through a vacuum, and the plus and minus of electricity. Second and third editions, and a Sequel to the Experiments, all appeared in the same year.
Ekelöf 294 (third edition). Wheeler Gift 333 (third edition).
First Description of Tuberculous Meningitis
157. WHYTT, Robert. Observations on the Dropsy in the Brain. To which are added his other treatises never hitherto published by themselves. Edinburgh: Printed for John Balfour, by Balfour, Auld, & Smellie, 1768.
8vo, pp. (iv), 193. Without the blank leaf U4. Faint library stamp on the title and upper corner neatly restored, foxing on the first three leaves, paper slightly browned. Good modern half calf antique.
£1500
FIRST EDITION, with the extremely rare appendix. G&M 4634. The first account of the clinical course of tuberculous meningitis in children. Whytt divided the disease into three stages according to the character of the pulse, and he attributed its various manifestations to the presence of a serous exudate in the brain. “It is a masterpiece of clinical observation, the finest first description of a disease to appear until then. Brief and lucid, the monograph is based on about a dozen cases in which everything of clinical value that could be detected without modern laboratory apparatus
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is recorded. Monro’s foramen, connecting the lateral and third ventricles of the brain, was first observed greatly dilated in one of the cases here described, which Monro (Secundus) and Whytt saw in 1764 during a consultation” (Samuel Radbill, enthusiastically, in DSB).
This work was published by his son two years after Whytt’s death. The other papers printed with it, on experiments with opium, the strength of lime-waters, etc., had mostly appeared in journals, but the Observations appears here for the first time (it was also published in the same year in the Works). This copy has the Appendix which is rarely found with the main work. Still, History of paediatrics, pp. 443–449. McHenry pp. 112–120.
158. WILMUT, I., A.E. SCHNIEKE, J. McWHIR, A.J. KIND & K.H.S. CAMPBELL.
Viable Offspring derived from Fetal and Adult Mammalian Cells. [In:] Nature, vol. 385, no. 6619, pp. 810–813. London: Macmillan, 27th February 1997.
4to (275 x 210 mm.), pp. xvi, 763–844, 44. Original printed wrappers. The whole issue is offered, in which the article by Wilmut et al occupies pp. 810–813. Paper very slightly browned in the margins, otherwise as new.
£750
FIRST EDITION. The first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell.
The birth of the lamb named Dolly “established that the nuclei of at least some adult cells can be used to produce sheep or other animals that are genetically identical to the donor, when transferred into eggs from which the genetic material has been removed. Wilmut led the team that created Dolly but credits his colleague Keith Campbell with ‘66 percent’ of the invention that made Dolly’s birth possible.” G&M 7457.
This event was a milestone in the history of genetics, not so much for the ability to clone an entire animal but for the advances that it gave into stem cell research and a wealth of new medical advances.
First European Treatise on Optics
159. WITELO. Peri optikes [in Greek], id est, De Natura, Ratione, & proiectione radiorum visus, luminum, colorum atque formarum, quam vulgo Perspectivam vocant, libri X. Norimbergae [Nuremberg]: apud Joann Petreium, 1551.
Folio, (iv) + 297 leaves. Title printed in red and black with a large woodcut vignette demonstrating optical problems, full-page woodcut of the arms of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and the dedicatee, and numerous woodcut diagrams in the text. 18th century Italian(?) half sheep (spine neatly restored), unlettered, marbled sides, some wormholes in the binding just entering the first few leaves. Light browning (heavier in some gatherings) after aa1 which appears to be printed on different paper stock to the first 184 leaves, otherwise a nice copy. Early note of purchase for 15 soldi from one Bottero on front endpaper, small defaced library stamp in lower margin of title. £18,000 Second edition, a reissue of the first of 1535 with the same collation, of the Perspectiva by the Polish friar and physicist Witelo who flourished in the second half of the thirteenth century. Considered the first textbook of optics written by a European, this was the work from which Renaissance Europe learned optics and the source for many optical texts that would appear subsequently. It influenced Leonardo da Vinci, Giambattista della Porta, Tycho Brahe, Galileo and Descartes among others, and was the starting point of Kepler’s study of the retinal image.
“While John Peckham’s Perspectiva communis was medieval Europe’s most used basic optics text, Witelo’s Perspectiva was the advanced comprehensive equivalent… There were several reasons for its utility. First, though following Alhazen closely, Witelo imposed a Euclid-like structure of theorems or propositions, including enunciations, definitions and proofs. This made the text more accessible and didactic; significantly more useful as a textbook than Alhazen’s De Aspectibus. Second, Witelo’s Perspectiva included a long first book that introduced all the plane and three-dimensional geometry that would be required to study the subsequent text… Third, Witelo’s Perspectiva included topics not covered in the De Aspectibus, including mirror foci, refraction by glass spheres, and atmospheric refraction” (DiLaura).
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DiLaura, Bibliotheca Optica, 23. Sarton II, pp. 1027–1028. Thorndike II, pp, 454–456. King, History of the telescope, p. 26. For the first edition of 1535 see Stillwell, The awakening interest in science, 254. This edition is rarer than the first; it is not, for instance, in the NLM which has the first.
160. [WORCESTER. Edward Somerset, Marquess of.] A Century of the Names and Scantlings of such Inventions, as at present I can call to mind to have tried and perfected, which (my former notes being lost), I have, at the instance of a powerful friend, endeavoured now in the year 1655. to set these down in such a way as may sufficiently instruct me to put any of them in practice. London: Printed by J. Grismond in the year 1663.
12mo, 10 leaves, 72 pages, 1 leaf (blank), 5 leaves (index). Without the blank leaves A1 and E6. Title and text within ruled borders. 20th century red morocco by Sangorski & Sutcliffe, gilt edges, bookplate. A very nice copy in a beautiful binding.
£2500
FIRST EDITION. Edward Somerset, the second marquess of Worcester, was privately educated, immensely wealthy, and well travelled. In greatly reduced circumstances after the Civil War, he resumed his lifelong interest in experimental science, particularly of a mechanical nature. In 1655 he wrote the present catalogue, describing with the briefest of descriptions one hundred of his inventions. These included a calculating machine, a submarine, a ‘flying man’, a ‘continually-going watch’, improvements to firearms, and many others.
“However, it is the ‘water commanding engine’ (no. 68) which has excited most interest among historians of science, because its inventor claimed to have found a way to ‘drive up water by fire’ (Dircks, 475). Although the word ‘steam’ was not used as a term in science or engineering until after Worcester’s death, the water commanding engine appears to have been powered by that means, and thus the marquess has been promoted, most vigorously by Dircks, as an inventor of the steam engine… A definitive verdict seems as elusive as ever, but it seems that…steam power was indeed deployed at Vauxhall in a prototype of the water commanding engine, but that it was ultimately unsuccessful” (ODNB).
Wing W3532. A few copies have the very rare 34 supplementary pages (i.e. pp. 73–106), but these are not present in the great majority of copies. See Dircks, The life…of the second marquis of Worcester (1865).
161. [ZANOTTI, Eustachio.] La Meridiana del tempio di San Petronio rinnovata l’anno MDCCLXXVI. Si aggiunge la ristampa del libro pubblicato l’anno 1695. sopra la ristaurazione della meridiana eseguita dai celebri matematici Gio: Domenico Cassini e Domenico Guglielmini. In Bologna: Nell’ Instututo delle Scienze. 1779.
4to, pp. 56, vi, 1 leaf (with full-page engraving incorporating a portrait of Cassini on the verso, recto blank), pp. 88, and 2 folding engraved plates (one very large) measuring 36.2 x 60.5 cm printed on 2 sheets pasted together and 52.5 x 179.5 cm printed on 11 sheets pasted together. Some foxing (mostly light), signature on the first page of the dedication. Contemporary vellum, brown morocco label on spine (splash stain on lower cover).
£3200
FIRST EDITION, incorporating a reprint of Cassini and Guglielmini’s book with a similar title published in 1695.
In 1653 Gian Domenico Cassini (1625–1712, the first of that dynasty of astronomers) began work on a new and larger meridian in the church of San Petronio in Bologna, replacing the one constructed by Egnatio Danti in 1575. The construction succeeded perfectly, and its success made Cassini a brilliant reputation. For the first time, a measuring instrument of sufficient resolution and precision had been made to settle the question: does the sun go around the earth or the earth around the sun? During the following years he made numerous astronomical observations, providing increasingly more precise measurements. They enabled him to succeed where Galileo had failed in producing ephemerides, published in 1668 and again in 1693, used by astronomers and navigators to determine longitude, and by Ole Rømer in 1675 to demonstrate that light has a finite speed.
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Eighty years later Eustachio Zanotti restored Cassini’s meridian. “Zanotti’s accomplishments also included the restoration in 1776 of Gian Domenico Cassini’s sundial in the church of San Petronio. The displaced perforated roofing slab forming the gnomon was raised slightly, restoring the instrument to its original height. The old deformed iron ship representing the meridian was removed and a solid foundation was laid as a base for new level marble slabs with the new brass meridian strip. Accurate geodetic and topographic measurements made in 1904 and 1925 have verified that the instrument has remained as Zanotti left it, that is, in the position that perfectly reproduces Cassini’s original conditions of construction” (DSB).
The two folding plates are printed from the same copperplates used in Cassini and Guglielmini’s book of 1695, but the second plate, which at almost 6 feet long must be one of the largest in a scientific book, has an additional strip along the bottom illustrating Zanotti’s new brass meridian.
Diving and Underwater Technology 1405–1830
The largest and most detailed study of the history of early diving and underwater technology ever published.
Fully indexed, including a bibliography which lists every edition of all the principal printed sources in the same order as in the main text.
Profusely illustrated and with detailed bibliographies of all the sources.
From the designs of 15th and 16th century military engineers to the birth of natural philosophy and science and on into the Industrial Revolution, this book traces the development of diving and underwater technology up to the introduction of the standard dress in the nineteenth century.
Diving and Underwater Technology 1405–1830 studies all the printed books and numerous manuscripts on the subject produced between 1405 and 1830. Manuscripts or printed works which contain a description of diving apparatus, of an actual dive, or are wholly devoted to diving are included as a principal entry which gives the name of the author, his dates of birth and death and a brief biography, the title of the work, the reference to the relevant passage, and a note on the text. Up to about 1730 most of the principal entries include the complete text either in the original English or in an English translation, together with any illustrations. Those that do not are in most cases either quoted, paraphrased or translated elsewhere in the book.
2 volumes, over 900 pages, 289 illustrations almost entirely from original sources; many in colour. Crown quarto (10 x 8 inches, 254 x 203 mm.)
Case-bound in cloth.
Published by Nigel Phillips, 2018.
ISBN: 978-1-9996777-0-1
PRICE (per set of 2 volumes) £150 (including UK postage)
Place your order online at: www.nigelphillips.com or email the publisher at: nigel@nigelphillips.com