Category: C18th

BOURDET, Etienne

AN EXCELLENT POCKET BOOK ON DENTAL HYGIENE

BOURDET, Etienne. Soins faciles pour la propreté de la Bouche, pour la conservation des Dents

Paris, Chez Jean-Th. Hérissant, 1771.

£775

16mo, 248 pp., 2 ff.. Roman letter, some Italic. Head pieces. Bound in mottled calf over boards, marbled pastedowns, single fillet frame blind-tooled along edges, gilt spine with title on red morocco label, a.e.r.. A little rubbed to spine ends, corners and cover extremities. A lovely copy.

Second enlarged edition of this work on dentistry by Etienne Bourdet (the first edition, published in 1759, had only 136 pages). A pupil of Pierre Fauchard, Bourdet was one of the most renowned dentist of his time. He soon entered in the service of Louis XV as personal dental surgeon. The king later elevated him to noble ranks for his professional merit. The author discusses the importance of the teeth both as embellishments to physical appearance and as cutting tools essential to life. He also stresses the need for oral hygiene in order to prevent infection of the bloodstream by the swallowing of impure saliva. The work is divided into sections on keeping the mouth healthy, on preventing damage to the teeth, and on repairing damage caused by neglect or accident. For toothache Bourdet prescribes luxation, through which the dental nerve was disrupted at the root. There are also observations on false teeth, and advice to parents and to others bringing up children. Part of the material is drawn from Bourdet’s “Recherches sur toutes les parties de l’Art du Dentiste” published in Paris in 1757.

“According to Bourdet, the teeth are so apt to decay, partly because of the frequent changes of temperature to which they are exposed, and partly because, differently from the bones, they are not provided with any protective organic covering. In many caries, Bourdet extracted the tooth, filled it with lead or gold leaf, and replanted it; but if, in extracting, the alveolus had been injured…he replanted the tooth immediately, to preserve the alveolus from the damaging action of the air, and carried out the stopping at a later time…Bourdet made prosthetic pieces… [but] one of his principal merits is that of having brought artificial plates to perfection by fixing them not, as heretofore, to the opening of the palate or inside the nose, but by means of lateral clasps fitted to the teeth… Bourdet wrote an excellent book on dental hygiene” (Guerini)

David p.39, Poletti p.31, Weinberger p.316, Guerini p. 309: “A celebrated dentist and elegant writer, in whom the gifts of literary and scientific culture were coupled with a vast experience and a profound spirit of observaton.” Blake p.61, Wellcome II p. 213; Quaritch, Cat. 1197, 10.

BUFFON, Comte de

BUFFON, Georges Louis Marie Leclerc, Comte de. Histoire Naturelle, Générale et Particulière, avec la Description du Cabinet du Roi. Tome Onzième [Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux]

Paris, De l’Imprimerie Royale, 1780.

£220

FIRST EDITION. 12mo. xx, 495 pp.. One volume, no. 11, out of 18 (all published between 1770 and 1785). Roman letter, some Italic. Half title, title with royal vignette, table of contents and text, with 15 magnificent hand-coloured engraved plates of birds (water-coloured). Head and tail pieces. Bound in contemporary French mottled calf over boards, covers and corners slightly worn. Spine elaborately gilt, divided in six compartments with raised bands; two morocco labels, red and green, with gilt lettering. Hinges a bit tender. A.e.r.. A lovely copy with marbled pastedowns.

Buffon was keeper of the “Jardin du Roi”, later the “Jardin des Plantes”, and the collection connected with it, the “Cabinet du Roi” in 1739. He augmented the collection of birds exponentially, increasing it to more than 800 species gathered from all four corners of the globe. In 1765 at Buffon’s direction, Martinet began drawing and painting the collection, and engraved the plates under the supervision of Edme-Loius Daubenton.

Wellcome II, p.268; Norman 370.

SCHABOL, Roger

 

SCHABOL, Roger. Dictionnaire pour la Théorie et la Pratique du Jardinage et de l’Agriculture, par Principes, et démontrées d’après la Physique des Végétaux.

Paris, Chez Debure Pere, 1770.

£1,500

8vo, pp. lxxx, 528; engraved frontispiece, 18 engraved plates at the end (8 folding) and occasional illustrations throughout the text. Plate 13 with lower half cut out, which was seemingly illustrated, for traces of printing are visible (plate 14 looks similar as to the image setting, although the lower half is blank). Small vignette on title page, head and tail pieces. Bound in original decorated wrappers, paper label to spine with ink title. Label and wrapper on spine deteriorated, showing sewing on four stations of single supports. Untrimmed, with deckled edges. A fine copy, complete, in its original wrappers, with frontispiece and all the 18 plates here present, which often are lacking.

The abbot Jean-Roger Shabol (1690-1768) was a passionate French gardener and horticulturalist, who is renown for his significant contribution to the field. His dictionary of gardening was first published in Paris in 1767. He introduced it with a “Speech on gardening”, which describes the functions of the air, the parts of plants, seeds and sap. The present copy is the second edition of this lovely work, published posthumously, which includes descriptions of garden features, methods of cultivation, horticultural implements and stages of growth in fruit, flower and tree.

FORTIS, Alberto

FORTIS, Alberto. Delle ossa d’elefanti e d’altre curiosità de’ monti di Romagnano nel veronese. Memoria epistolare diretta al signor cavaliere Giuseppe Cobres, Della Società de’ Naturalisti di Berlino

Vicenza, nella stamperia Turra, 1786.

£850

8vo, pp. 85. Thick good quality paper, plus a final large and attractive folding plate showing an enormous fossil elephant tooth from the collection of Count Giovanni Battista Gazzola (1757-1834). Bound in contemporary pasteboard covered with marbled paper. Ink title on paper label glued to spine, a little worn. Binding still holding tight the book block. An excellent copy of a curious natural historical work.

Known mostly for his “Travels into Dalmatia” (1774), Alberto Fortis (1741–1803), was a Venetian abbot, writer, naturalist and cartographer. In 1795 Fortis was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in London. His addressee, the German Joseph Paul Edler of Cobres, was born as Giuseppe Paolo Cobres (between 1737 and 1749 – 1823 in Göggingen) in the Republic of Venice. He later became a banker, private scholar, naturalist in Augsburg and a member of the Berlin Society of Friends of Natural Science. This work is an account of curious findings found in the area of Verona by the Abbot Fortis, on the mountains of Romagnano. The final plates shows one of the about 1200 specimens, mainly fossils of fishes, in the personal museum of Count Giovanni Battista Gazzola.

ARBUTHNOT, John

ARBUTHNOT, John. An Essay Concerning the Nature of Aliments, And the Choice of Them, According to the different Constitutions of Human Bodies

London, Printed for J. and R. Tonson, 1756.

£425

8vo, pp. xxxii (title, preface, contents, explanation of chemical terms and introduction), 365 (Essay and Practical Rules, starting at p. 199, with preface and contents – pp. 201-8), ff. 1 (publishers ads). Ink autograph of early owner “Joseph … / Lynn / May 6.th 1775” on recto of left endpaper. Text very clean, fresh and absolutely crips. Bound in contemporary calf with double-fillet gilt tooled along edges, spine in six compartments with low-raised bands. Title in a thick white pen trait to spine. An excellent copy internally, rather worn externally.

John Arbuthnot (1667 – 1735), known as Dr Arbuthnot, was a Scottish physician, satirist and polymath in London. First printed in 1730, the present book of his was quite popular, and a second edition, with advice on diet (here included), came out the next year. There followed four further editions and translations into French and German.

ESTC N9334.

LEWIS, William

[LEWIS, William]. The new Dispensatory: Containing I. The Theory and Practice of Pharmacy. II. A Distribution of Medicinal Simples,… III. A full Translation of the London and Edinburgh Pharmacopoeias;… IV. Directions for Extemporaneous Prescriptions;… V. A Collection of Cheap Remedies for the Use of the Poor. The whole interpreted With Practical Causations and Observations. Intended as a Correction, and Improvement of Quincy.

London, Printed for J. Nourse, 1753.

£750

FIRST EDITION. 8vo, pp. xii (title, preface and contents), 32 (introduction), 664 (text: dispensatory, appendix and index). Roman letter and some Italic. Tail pieces. Bound in contemporary calf, spine gilt, rebacked and with red morocco label, corners repaired. An excellent copy.

William Lewis (1708-1781) was a chemist and physician. The English dispensatories of the seventeenth and fellowing century were mainly commentaries based on the London and other pharmacopeias, which began to be expanded, more or less comprehensively, in order to work as reference books (Kremer-Urdang). John Quincy (d. 1722) started his carrier as an apothecary apprentice (cf. Ferguson II, 239). His ‘English Dispensatory’ (1721), of which a fourth edition appeared in 1722 and a twelfth in 1749, contains a complete account of the materia medica and of therapeutics, and many of the prescriptions contained in it were long popular. He studied mathematics and the philosophy of Sir Isaac Newton, and received the degree of M.D. from the university of Edinburgh. 

ESTC T93256

MEAD, Richard

PRESENTATION COPY FROM THE AUTHOR

MEAD, Richard. Medica Sacra : sive, de morbis insignioribus, qui in Bibliis memorantur, commentarius.

London, Prostant apud Joannem Brindley, 1749.

£2150

FIRST EDITION. 8vo, ff. 2 (half title and title), pp. xix (preface), (3, i.e. capitum argumenta), 108 (text). Roman letter, some Italic, sporadic Greek. Head and tail pieces. C19th armorial bookplate of the Earls of Macclesfield’s “South Library” at Shirburn Castle with the motto: “Sapere aude” and press mark in ink (152. D. 15.) on left pastedown, dated 1860; partially covering older library number in pen. “From the Author” written in pen on verso of left endpaper. Printed on thick high quality paper in elegant type; a fresh, clean and crisp copy. Bound in contemporary beige calf over boards, single gilt-tooled along edges with stamped angular gilt fleurons. Gilt spine in seven compartments with suns in splendour tooled on the centre, plus four stars at corners of each section, raised bands. Orange morocco label with gilt lettering. Upper extremity of joints a bit tender, very minor rubbing on edges. A.e.r., a fine copy.

Richard Mead (1673-1754) was an English physician. His work, “A Short Discourse concerning Pestilential Contagion, and the Method to be used to prevent it” (1720), was of historic importance in the understanding of contagious epidemics. He was admitted to the Royal Society, to whose “Transactions” he contributed, writing on the parasitic nature of scabies. In 1714, Mead became the recognised head of his profession; he attended Queen Anne on her deathbed, and in 1727 was appointed physician to George II,  having previously served him in that capacity when he was prince of Wales. In this work, Mead argued that pagan ideas regarding demons had entered Christianity. The book was translated from Latin into English by Thomas Stack in 1755. Mead understood those afflicted by demons in the New Testament to refer simply to those suffering from a variety of illnesses: “That the Daemoniacs, daimonizomenoi, mentioned in the gospels, laboured under a disease really natural, though of an obstinate and difficult kind, appears to me very probable from the accounts given of them.” Contemporaries such as Isaac Newton, Joseph Mede, and Arthur Ashley Sykes shared Mead’s opinion on the subject.

ESTC T55017.

HUXHAM, John

HUXHAM, John. Observationes de Aëre et Morbis Epidemicis Ab Anno MDCCXXVIII. ad Finem Anni MDCCXXXVII. Plymuthi factae. His accedit Opusculum De Morbo Colico Damnoniensi [with] Volumen Alterum, ab Anni nimirum Initio MDCCXXXVIII ad Exitum usque MDCCXLVIII

Venice, Apud Laurentium Basilium, 1764.

£250

FIRST VENETIAN EDITION. 8vo, 2 vols: I) ff. 4 (half title, frontispiece with a wind rose, title, dedicatory letter to Sir Hans Sloane and ecclesiastical license for printing), pp. xxx (prolegomena), 161 (text), 38 (opuscule on a case of colic disease spread among the Damnonian Britons, i.e. the indigenous of the Roman province of Damnonium, modern Devonshire and Cornwall, with capital Exeter – “Anno MDCCXXIV”), ff. 3 (index); II) pp. xx (title and preface), 208 (text and final index). Small vignette on title pages. Roman letter, some Italic, sporadic Greek, diagrams, Arabic numerals and astrological symbols. Very lightly age-yellowed, or slightly spotted, only on margins and some initial and final leaves. Generally very fresh and clean, printed on very thin paper with deckled edges, some gatherings still uncut. Bound in contemporary pasteboards. Left joint of first volume split. Gatherings stitched, two double sewing supports visible. Early ink title and library numbers (275, 276) to spines. An excellent copy.

John Huxham (1692–1768) was an English surgeon and doctor notable for his study of fevers. In 1750 he published on the topic, receiving the Copley Medal for his contribution, just a few years later. Huxham attended Exeter academy, the university of Leyden and then finished his M. D. in Rheims. He started a medical practice soon after in Plymouth. In 1723, James Jurin, one of the secretaries of the Royal Society, asked for volunteers to keep daily records of their observations of the weather including readings of the barometric pressure, temperature, rainfall, and direction and strength of the wind. Their observations were to be submitted annually to the secretaries of the society for collation and analysis. In 1724 Huxham began to keep such records and, from 1728 on until 1748, he noted monthly the prevalence of epidemic diseases. These records he published in these two volumes. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1739.

POUILLY, Louis Jean Levesque de

[POUILLY, Louis Jean Levesque de]. The Theory of Agreeable Sensations : in which the Laws observed by Nature in the distribution of Pleasure are investigated ; and the Principles of Natural Theology and Moral Philosophy are established…A dissertation upon Harmony of Stile.

London, Printed for W. Owen, 1774.

£350

8vo, pp. x (half title, title, preface), ff. 3 (contents and errata), pp. 216. Early nineteenth-century ink autograph of “L. Ritchie” on verso of half title. Bound in contemporary calf over boards, restoration to corners. Recently skilfully rebacked. An excellent copy.

An excellent and unsullied copy of this treatise demonstrating that happiness, which, according to the author, is the end of moral theology, can be reached by pursuing virtuous behaviour and the law of nature. The French philosopher Pouilly (1691-1751) illustrates the theory of agreeable sensations, which are those sensations provoked in men by a righteous moral conduct. Only these, according to the author, can lead man towards the fullest happiness and respect of God. He also interpreted and commented on Newton’s Principia.

ESTC T79271

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