[Rarebooks] fa: EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY MEDICINE - Sydenham, Von Haller, Richard Mead (Inscribed)

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, along with other 17th, 18th, & 19th-century titles, auctions ending Sunday, Sept. 9. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/cbl2en6

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.


ENTIRE WORKS OF DR. THOMAS SYDENHAM 1742/First Ed. - JOHN SWAN & SAMUEL JOHNSON
John Swan (editor & translator): The Entire Works of Dr. Thomas Sydenham, Newly made English from the Originals: Wherein The History of Acute and Chronic Diseases, and the Safest and most Effectual Methods of treating them, are faithfully, clearly, and accurately delivered. To which are added, Explanatory and Practical Notes, From the best medicinal Writers. London: Printed for Edward Cave, at St John’s Gate, MDCCXLII [1742], FIRST EDITION. Thick 8vo (20 cm) bound in recent quarter leather over marbled boards...
The first edition of this popular and influential compendium of Sydenham's works. The unsigned prefatory "Life of Sydenham" (pp. v-xi) was in fact written by Samuel Johnson... Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689) has been called the "English Hippocrates" and the Father of English medicine. "One of the greatest figures in internal medicine,… his reputation rests on his first-hand accounts of such conditions as the malarial fevers of his times, gout, scarlatina, measles, etc." (Garrison, Heirs of Hippocrates). Contains his account of the London Plague Years of 1665-1666 as well as observations on smallpox, venereal disease, dropsy, epilepsy, hypochondria, consumption, the "hysteric passion in women," etc., etc. His "Processus Integri: or Complete Method of Curing most Diseases"  makes for particularly fascinating, if rather hair-raising, reading: for all his inarguable erudition, Sydenham prescribed most of the standard treatments of the day, including bleeding, blistering and Homeric quantities of purgatives.


RICHARD MEAD - De Imperio Solis ac Lunae in Corpora Humana - INSCRIBED - 1746
Richard Mead: De Imperio Solis ac Lunae in Corpora Humana, et Morbis inde Oriundis [On the Influence of the Sun and Moon on Human Bodies and the Diseases Arising Thence]. Auctore Richardo Mead, Colleg. Medicor. Londin. Socio, Reg. Societ. Sodali, et Medico Regio… Editio Altera, auctior et emendatior. Londini [London]: [Printed by William Bowyer] prostat apud Joannem Brindley… New Bond Street, MDCCXLVI [1746]. Tall 8vo (21 cm); early period calf, rebacked with modern calf...
Presentation copy, inscribed on the verso of the front flyleaf: “From the Author.”... Second, "revised and enlarged," edition of this treatise in which Mead, Isaac Newton's friend and physician, uses Newtonian physics to argue that the gravitational forces of the sun and moon affect the flow of body fluids. Despite the looniness (or lunaeness) of his theory, Richard Mead (1673-1754), was one of the leading figures in early 18th-century English medicine, a fellow of the Royal Society, co-founder of the Foundling Hospital, and physician to both Queen Anne and George I. His work on poisons and transmissible diseases, in particular, were of historic importance.


ALBRECHT VON HALLER - DR. ALBERT HALLER'S PHYSIOLOGY 1754 - 2 vols/First Edition
	w/ MS. NOTES of a CONTEMPORARY PHYSICIAN/OBSTETRICIAN
Albrecht von Haller; Samuel Mihles, trans.: Dr. Albert Haller’s Physiology; Being a Course of Lectures upon the Visceral Anatomy and Vital Oeconomy of Human Bodies…; now illustrated with useful Remarks; with an History of Medicine; and with a Nosology, or Doctrine of Diseases. In Two Volumes. London: Printed for W. Innys and J. Richardson, 1754. FIRST EDITION. Two volumes, 8vo, in recent black cloth and burgundy boards with gilt-lettered leather spine label and new endpapers... Bound without the frontispiece... 
First edition of this early (first?) English translation of Haller's Primae Linae Physiologiae (1747), arguably the most influential physiological work of its time. Albrecht von Haller (1708-1777) was a Swiss physician, anatomist, naturalist and poet, professor at the University of Göttingen and fellow of the Royal Society, a true dilettante in the best eighteenth-century sense of the word. The work includes sections on blood, respiration, muscles, the senses, genitals and conception, nutrition, etc., etc.
The unidentified eighteenth-century commentator whose occasional written marginalia adorn the pages was clearly a medical man of some distinction and discernment. Beneath a reference to Johann Nathanael Lieberkühn, he has written: "N.B. you will find amongst my Microscopes, an excee[d]ing good one of Dr. Lieberkuhn's own making & inventing, w[i]th 3 reflecting lenses…" Elsewhere he notes:"Our author spells ye word Plait wrong in many Pages of this Book, as you see where it is marked." He has continued his notes onto the rear endpapers of both volumes, on one of which he complains that in a section asserting that the eyes of human fetuses are closed, "ye English impertinent Translator makes Haller say, in Chicklings of the Egg also, w[hi]ch I think is taking great libertys w[i]th Haller—(tho' it is true, & in Puppys & Catts)…" In an additional two sheets of notes, written front and back and loosely laid in, our commentator displays extensive experience in obstetrics ("I have for many years found it necessary to make a Compress on ye Belly to keep up the Womb in such Women as were subject to Miscarry from a relaxation of the Uterine Vessels &c…") and refers to the Dutch anatomist Frederik Ruysch ("Our Worthy & most Eminent Anatomist Ruy[s]ch") and compares a preserved anatomical specimen of his own to those for which Ruysch was renowned ("Being allways pleased w[i]th Ruysches Preparations I never was so well pleased as when I came near His; One especially, viz. the true structure of ye Womb…").


ALBRECHT VON HALLER - MEMOIRS OF ALBERT DE HALLER - Warrington: 1783
Thomas Henry: Memoirs of Albert de Haller, M. D. Member of The Sovereign Council of Berne; President of the University, and of the Royal Society Of Gottingen; Fellow of the Royal Society of London, &c. Compiled, chiefly, from the Elogium spoken before the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris, and from the Tributes paid to his Memory by other Foreign Societies. Warrington: Printed by W. Eyres, for J. Johnson, No. 72, St. Paul’s Church-Yard, London, MDCCLXXXIII [1783]. FIRST EDITION. Small 8vo (15.5 cm) in recent black cloth and burgundy boards with gilt-lettered leather spine label and new endpapers... 
Dampstaining to the margins of the portrait frontispiece (engraved by William Blake)...
An uncommon early memoir of Haller, issued by a provincial English printer and compiled by "Magnesia" Henry (1734-1816), a surgeon and apothecary who gained some fame by inventing a process for preparing magnesia alba (magnesium oxide). He was one of the founders of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. Albrecht von Haller (1708-1777) was a Swiss physician, anatomist, naturalist and poet, professor at the University of Göttingen and fellow of the Royal Society, a true dilettante in the best eighteenth-century sense of the word. His works, on physiology in particular, were widely influential.