Category: Anatomy

[HOOKE. Robert, ed.]

HOOKE’S RARE CONTINUATION OF THE TRANSACTIONS

[HOOKE. Robert, ed.] Philosophical Collections

London, Printed for John Martyn, [Moses Pitt, Richard Chiswell], for the Royal Society, 1679-82.

£20000

FIRST EDITION. Compete set of 7 parts in one volume, 210 pp., 6 folding plates, one full-page engraving (no. 5, p. 161), one half-page engraving (no. 4, p. 92), Bound in modern half calf and buckram over boards by Sangorsky & Sutcliffe. A fine copy. 

The polymath Robert Hooke (1635-1703) was authorised by the Council of the Royal Society to publish the Philosophical Collections after the official Transactions ceased publication on Henry Odenburg’s death in 1677. Ordinary publication of the Transactions was resumed in January 1682- 3. The purpose of the journal was to provide an up-to-date account of any sicientific topic, such as physical, anatomical, chemical, mechanical, astronomical, optical, natural-philosophical and natural-historical observations, and to advertise the publication of such books. Complete sets of these seven numbers are very uncommon. The present volume also includes anatomical and medical studies. Hooke here published important papers, especailly An optical discourse, which concerned a cure for short-sightedness. One finds in the present collection Leeuwenhoek’s discovery of spermatozoa through the study of animal semen; Lana’s “flying chariot”; Borelli’s De motu musculorum; Tyson’s Anatomy of a porpess (sic); and astronomical observations by Hevelius, Flamsteed, and Cassini on the eclipse of Jupiter by the moon in 1679 and 1681. Furthermore, major discoveries by Malpighi, Moxon, Thomas Burnett, Edmund Halley, Bernoulli, and Leibniz are published in this series for the first time. The plates show Bernier’s flying machine, Borelli’s underwater breathing apparatus, and a new lamp invented by Robert Boyle. William Brigg’s A new theory of vision, a discussion of the optic nerves, is accompanied by a plate illustrating a dissected eye; this detailed physiological study of vision motivated Newton to republish it in 1685 with his own introduction. The Royal Society, founded in 1660, is the oldest scientific society in Great Britain and one of the oldest in Europe. Founders and early members included the scientist Bishop John Wilkins, the philosopher Joseph Glanvill, the mathematician John Wallis and the architect Christopher Wren, who wrote the preamble of its charter.

Keynes, Hooke 24. Norman 1100 (listing only 3 folding plates). See PMM 148 for the ‘Philosophical Transactions’.

COOPER, Astley

COOPER, Astley. Observations on the Structure and Diseases of the Testis

London, John Churchill, 1841.

£500

Large 4to. Two parts bound together, both with half-title leaves. Title-page, pp. xiii (i), 330, 24 plates (10 + 14). Many leaves unopened. Bound in contemporary blind-tooled brown buckram, skilfully rebacked. Very light soiling and browning to margins. An excellent copy.

Second edition. Sir Astley Cooper (1768-1841) was a pre-eminent London surgeon, professor of comparative anatomy at the Royal College of Surgeons from 1813-1815, vice-president of the Royal Society, a member of the court of examiners of the college in 1822, and he served as president twice, in 1827 and 1836. In his published works, he paid particular attention to highquality illustrations, drawn by a succession of artists that he himself employed.

Garrison & Morton lists only the first edition, 1830 (No. 4166).

KEILL, James

KEILL, James. The Anatomy of the Human Body Abridged : Or, a Short and Full View of All the Parts of the Body. Together with Their Several Uses, Drawn From Their Compositions and Structures

London, Printed for William Keblewhite, 1698.

£2,500

FIRST EDITION. 12mo. 12 ff. (title, dedicatory letter, preface and errata), 328 pp., plus 4 ff. (table of contents and publishers ads), 4 final blank leaves. Ink autograph of “R.d Taylor, 1833” on left pastedown. Title within in double-fillet frame. Very occasional pencil underlining. Clean and fresh internally. Bound in contemporary calf over boards, triple fillet blind-tooled panels on centre of covers with external angular fleurons, double fillet frame along edges. Skilfully rebacked preserving original spine in four compartments, and restored on corners. An excellent copy.

“James Keill (1673-1719), author of the most popular English anatomical compendium of the close of the seventeenth and early part of the eighteenth centuries, also enjoyed renown in the latter century as one of Britain’s leading iatromathematical physiologists…Keill felt himself sufficiently prepared to lecture on anatomy as early as 1698 for in that year he published the first edition of his popular Anatomy of the Humane Body abridged (London). The book is dedicated to Edward Tyson (1650-1708), lecturer in anatomy at Chirurgeons’ Hall and England’s leading comparative anatomist whose encouragement Keill credits with having led him to publish the work and whose ‘private Favours and Civilities’ Keill acknowledges. The dedication was retained in later editions but Tyson appears not to have figured further in Keill’s career. As a small, concise compendium, Keill’s Anatomy filled a definite gap in English anatomical works of that time but it was hardly an original effort. Keill himself made no secret of the fact that his ‘small Pocket-Book’, as he described it, was based upon the anatomical epitome of ‘M. Bourdon … who has expressed some things especially in his first Chapter, so briefly, and yet altogether so fully, as that I thought I could not do better than to Copy after them.’ However, some sections of Keill’s Anatomy, such as that on the brain, diverge considerably more from Bourdon than the earlier pages. It is thus incorrect to call it simply a copy of the French work, for although it appears that Keill had a copy of Bourdon’s work in front of him when he wrote his own, he had no hesitation in adding sentences or paragraphs to Bourdon’s text, deleting items such as clinical references, and otherwise rearranging material as he saw fit.” (JAMES KEILL OF NORTHAMPTON, PHYSICIAN, ANATOMIST AND PHYSIOLOGIST by F. M. VALADEZ and C. D. O’MALLEY)

ESTC R16835.

CHESELDEN, William

AN EXCEPTIONALLY CLEAN AND FRESH COPY

CHESELDEN, William. The Anatomy of the Human Body

London, Printed by W. Bowyer, 1730.

£1,650

8vo. 4 books in 1 volume; ff. 8 (half title, title, dedicatory letter, Preface and Contents), pp. 255 (=355), with 34 engraved plates. It includes the final Syllabus (an anatomical index with several diagrams) and the Appendix, with 3 additional plates. Head and tail pieces, and floriated initials. Early nineteenth-century bookplate of the Tinclars Library, Brampton Vicarage, Westmoreland. “Ex-libris Brent Gration-Maxfield” written on pastedown. Contemporary calf over boards, gilt double-fillet frame on covers and  pairs of horizontal gilt double-fillets for each of the six compartments of the spine, low-raised bands. Fore-edges sprinkled in red. A fine copy, notwithstanding a few minor marginal wormholes to the inner margins of a few leaves in the middle of the book. Fresh, clean and crips internally.

Fourth edition of this popular and splendidly illustrated work (first published in 1713) on the anatomy of the human body by the physician William Chelseden F. R. S. (1688-1752), who was in the service of queen Caroline of Ansbach, wife to King George II, and surgeon to St. Thomas’s Hospital. He was influential in establishing surgery as a scientific medical profession. Via the medical missionary Benjamin Hobson his work also helped revolutionise medical practices in China and Japan in the 19th century. Furthermore, Cheselden is credited with performing the first known case of full recovery from blindness in 1728, of a blind 13-year-old boy. He described this event at the end of the Appendix to the present work.

ESTC T121169

VERHEYEN, Philippe

VERHEYEN, Philippe. Corporis humani anatomiæ liber primus.

 Naples, Typis Felicis Mosca, De aere Bernardini Gessarj, 1717.

£500

4to, pp. (xx) 403 (i), a4 b6 A-3E4 3E2. Roman and Italic letter. Two volumes (volume one only, missing Liber Secundus or Supplementum, which is a textbook on physiology containing 6 additional plates). Engraved portrait of the author on frontispiece (“A.M. fe.[cit]”); woodcut printer’s device of a phoenix within a floriated shield sided by putti, motto “semper eadem” in a cartouche, and entwined initials on title page (signed by the artist Giovanna Pesche). Title in red and black. Library stamp on t-p. Decorated initials, head- and tailpieces. Forty detailed anatomical plates. Plate twenty with a marginal tear and tear to lower corner of F3 (pp. 45-46). Wormhole through foot of frontispiece and first four leaves, slightly affecting the date of publication. A little soiled and spotted, some light foxing and age yellowing throughout. In contemporary half calf with paper over boards. Small wormholes on covers and especially joints and spine, also visible on pastedowns; sign of rubbing on binding, spine and cover edges worn. Remains of a library label with initials “D.V.” on front pastedown.

This is the third edition of this successful anatomical work by the famous Flemish surgeon Philippe Verheyen (1648-1710). Little is known about the author’s childhood. He was probably a cowherd and it is assumed that he learned to read and write at the local parish school. Local folk tales claim that he had such a brilliant memory that he could recite the pastor’s sermon after attending mass on Sunday. The pastor of the village took him under his wing and he was sent to Leuven in 1672 where he spent three years at Trinity College. Concluding his studies in the liberal arts in 1675, Verheyen went on to study theology with the intention of following in the footsteps of his mentor and joining the clergy to become a priest. It was at this crucial juncture that an illness resulted in the amputation of his left leg rendering him unfit for the clergy. This event proved to be of utmost importance to the subsequent path he chose. Embarking on a career in medicine, he initially continued at Trinity College and from 1681 to 1683 studied in Leiden. He returned to Leuven in 1683, obtaining the doctorate in medicine there. He gave lessons in anatomy and surgery and also practiced medicine. As a result of his many publications, in a short period of time he acquired renown both in and outside the country. The year 1693 saw the first publication of his Corporis humani anatomia, whose illustrations are mainly based on Andreas Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabrica (1543).

See Morton no. 388 for the first edition. Opac Sbn IT\ICCU\PUVE\018048