Paris: chez Henry Le Gras, au troisième pilier de la grand’ Salle du Palais, à L couronnée, 1649. First edition, of Descartes’s important psychological treatise, one of his most influential works, and the last work published before his death in the following year. This copy made its way to England... More
Item #4536

First Edition in English. Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1845. The Haskell F. Norman copy, presentation copy inscribed by the translator, of the first the first modern textbook of psychiatry. Norman 727. “Esquirol’s book, compiled from papers and articles published over the past two decades, summarized the experience gained over a.... More
Item #3258

First editions, all very rare, of four early works on animal motion and physiology by the outstanding Renaissance anatomist and surgeon and founder of embryology. They were issued separately from 1614 to 1618; after Fabrici’s death in 1619, the treatises were reissued together by Meglietti with a general title page... More
Item #4467

Cologne: Arnold Birkmann, 1562. First edition, second issue, of the greatest Italian anatomical book of the sixteenth century (first published in 1561, see below).   “Rather than a complete study of the whole of anatomy, Falloppio, who was a pupil of Vesalius, designed this work as a critical commentary of... More
Item #4023

Lyon: Thibauld Payan, 1561. Second edition, almost four times the length of the first (1556), with 25 new illustrations including 22 instruments and three full skeletons. This is Franco’s major work, very rare, a copy in an untouched contemporary binding and with a fine provenance. “Pierre Franco, creator of suprapubic... More
Item #4490

[Vienna: Karl Gerold’s Sohn, 1877]. First edition, extremely rare separately-paginated offprint (journal pagination 15-27), of Freud’s first published paper. In 1876, three years after entering the University of Vienna as a medical student, Freud joined the laboratory of the eminent physiologist Ernst Brücke where he began studying the histology of... More
Item #4111

Leyden: Johann Maire, 1639. Third, but second complete, edition of the single most important and famous medical book ever published, containing Harvey’s discovery and experimental proof of the circulation of the blood, which created a revolution in physiology comparable to the Copernican revolution in astronomy. Harvey’s discovery was to become... More
Item #3607

[1813-1850]. An extraordinary collection of works by Sir John Herschel (1792-1871), the outstanding astronomer and physical scientist of his day, assembled for presentation to his son William James Herschel (not to be confused with John’s father, the astronomer Frederick William). The collection includes offprints of Herschel’s three most important publications... More
Item #4321

Washington: Carnegie Institution. First edition, the very rare offprint issue, of the first of the papers documenting McClintock’s discovery of ‘control elements,’ for which she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1983. “Between 1948 and 1951, McClintock carried out a series of sophisticated experiments with variegated maize... More
Item #3910

First Tournes edition. Geneva: Sumptibus Joan. Antonii, & Samuelis De Tournes. 1658. A fine copy, in contemporary vellum and with the often missing portrait, of “the best and most complete edition of Paracelsus’ collected works” (Neville). ❧Dibner, Heralds of Science, no. 124. “According to Sudhoff, bibliographer of Paracelsus’ works, this... More
Item #2753

Paris: André Wechel, 1568. First edition of Paré’s extremely rare treatise on the plague, smallpox and measles, based upon his own direct observations of these diseases, “one of his best works” (Thornton, p. 63). “Having passed the winter of 1564-65 on tour in Provence with Catherine de Medici and the... More
Item #4567

[Paris: Mallet-Bachelier, 1863]. Extremely rare separately-paginated offprint of the ne plus ultra of Pasteur’s work on spontaneous generation, and his proof that putrefaction was, like fermentation, caused by living organisms; this paper directly influenced Joseph Lister’s research on antisepsis (see below). Pasteur himself regarded the experiments described in this work... More
Item #3671

Paris: Victor Masson, 1858. First printing of this landmark paper, “often considered the beginning of bacteriology as a modern science, [which constitutes] the first demonstration of the connection between a specific fermentation and the activity of a specific microorganism” (Garrison & Morton). “In this epochal paper [Pasteur] first published his... More
Item #3699