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

Paris: Chez l'autheur, 1663. Rare first edition of this very important chemistry text, which went through some thirteen editions between 1663 and 1710. It is one of the earliest attempts to strip chemistry from its alchemical mysticism and to describe chemical preparations in an unambiguous manner. "The work is divided..... More
Item #3412

London: William Dugard, for Octavian Pulleyn, 1651. John Evelyn’s copy, and possibly the unique copy containing the portrait of Harvey, of the first edition of “the most important book on [embryology] to appear during the seventeenth century” (Garrison-Morton). In this work, “he rejected the prevailing doctrine of the preformation of..... More
Item #4785

Berlin: A. Förstner, 1851. First edition, an exceptionally fine copy in original printed wrappers, of this famous work which describes Helmholtz’s announcement of his invention of the ophthalmoscope, one of the most important clinical tools in medicine, which greatly improved the ability of ophthalmologists to diagnose eye disease and revolutionized..... More
Item #4855

Leipzig: Wolfgang Stöckel, 1501. An outstanding copy, in untouched contemporary binding from the collection of Jean Blondelet, of one of the earliest works with anatomical illustrations, “includes the first illustrations of the viscera in a printed book” (GM). “Hundt’s best-known work, Antropologia de hominis dignitate, natura et proprietatibus de elementis..... More
Item #4830

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

Upsalla: W. Schultz, 1868. First edition, a very fine copy in unrestored original printed wrappers, and rare thus, of one of the founding works of spectroscopy in which Ångström demonstrated the presence of hydrogen and a number of other elements in the sun; the atlas contains his great map of..... More
Item #4831

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 compendium of the..... 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