Milan: Giovanni Battista Bidelli, 1627. First edition, a fine copy, of the first book with anatomical illustrations printed in colour. “In 1622, during a vivisection performed upon a dog that had just fed, Aselli (1581-1625) rediscovered the chylous or lacteal vessels, which Galen and Eristratus reported to have been documented..... More
Item #5795
Turin: Stamperia Reale, 1837-41. First edition of one of the great rarities of chemistry, and especially rare in the original printed wrappers as here. This monumental work is the only large-scale publication of Avogadro (1776-1856), famous for his eponymous hypothesis (1811) that equal volumes of all gases at the same..... More
Item #4470
Frankfurt: Wolfgang Richter for Anton Humm, 1614. First editions of these two rare works on optics by the ‘Doctor Mirabilis’ Roger Bacon (1214/1220-1292) – ‘perspectiva’ for Bacon had a different meaning from today’s ‘perspective’. Bacon’s “skill in mathematics, experimental science and mechanical inventions was so remarkable for his time that..... More
Item #5811
Milan: Stamperia e Fonderia del Genio, 1804. First edition of this very important work on transplantation and experimental surgery in animals. “The publication of Degli Innesti Animali (On grafting in Animals) by Giuseppe Baronio (1759-1811) in 1804, the first account of experimental autologous skin transplantation in a ram, marks the..... More
Item #4516
Dresden: Matthes Stöckel, 1583. First edition, a very fine copy, of the founding monument of ophthalmology. Conceived as the first complete and experience-based textbook of diseases and surgery of the eye, it was written in vigorous German vernacular by the oculist of the Saxon court, who financed and supervised it..... More
Item #6511
London: John Murray, 1863. First edition of Bates’s wildly popular account of the years he spent in the Amazon region, during which he identified several thousand new species of insects and animals. He published it at the urging of Darwin, who wrote a lengthy appreciation of the book in the..... More
Item #5283
Plattsburgh, NY: F. P. Allen, 1833. First edition, inscribed by Beaumont to James W. Kingsbury, of “the most important study of digestion before Pavlov” (Garrison-Morton), this is “the first great American contribution to physiology” and “the most important presentation copy extant” (historyofinformation.com). Sir William Osler called Beaumont (1785-1853) “the pioneer..... More
Item #5501
Paris: Regnaud Chaudiere, 1551. First edition, very rare, of Belon’s first biological work. “In his Histoire naturelle des estranges poissons marins (1551), Belon presented an orderly classification of ‘fish’ that included the sturgeon, the tuna, the malarmat (peristedion), the dolphin, and the hippopotamus … Belon can be considered the originator..... More
Item #5859
Bologna: Hieronymus de Benedictis, 1518. First edition of the first separate treatise on head injuries and their neurosurgical treatment. “The work originated in a dispute between Berengario (1460-1530) and some other physicians over the treatment of Lorenzo de’ Medici, who had suffered a skull fracture in battle. Berengario described several..... More
Item #5182
Paris: Masson, 1878. First edition, very rare in commerce, inscribed author’s presentation copy, and an exceptionally fine copy, of Paul Bert’s classic work, which marks the foundation of the study of altitude physiology. In this work, “Bert proved that the principal symptoms of altitude sickness arise from reduced partial pressure..... More
Item #5284
Edinburgh: G. Hamilton & J. Balfour, 1754. First edition of one of the greatest rarities in the history of science, the discovery of carbon dioxide and the foundation work of quantitative chemical analysis. “There is perhaps no other instance of a graduation thesis so weighted with significant novelty as Black’s..... More
Item #5461
Chicago: American Medical Association, 1945. First edition, rare separately-paginated offprint (journal pagination 189-202), of this landmark paper on cardiac surgery. “Cardiac surgery owes much to the team from Johns Hopkins that developed an operation for tetralogy of Fallot, a common form of cyanotic congenital heart disease. The ‘Blalock-Taussig’ or ‘blue..... More
Item #5630
Rotterdam; A. Leers; London: excudebat J.C. veniuntque [sic] apud J. Crooke, 1662. First Latin edition, published one year after the first English edition, of this milestone in the history of chemistry. “His most important work [where he] set down his corpuscular theory of the constitution of matter, which finally freed..... More
Item #6240
Oxford: H. Hall for R. Davis & B. Took, 1680. Second edition in English (first, 1661), complete with the very rare advertisement leaf which is lacking from most copies, of this landmark in the history of science, “his most important work [where he] set down his corpuscular theory of the..... More
Item #5684
Paris: De l'Imprimerie Royale [later Imprimerie des Bâtimens du Roi; Hôtel de Thou; Plassan], 1749–An XII [1804]. First edition of the first work to present natural history as a continuous secular narrative, from planetary formation to the human races, and the work in which, across fifty-five years and four political..... More
Item #6665
Florence: Giorgio Marescotti, 1583. First edition, and an exceptionally fine copy, of “the first true textbook of botany’ (DSB): the introduction of Cesalpino’s classification system, which anticipated Linnaeus’ system of binomial nomenclature. “Whereas other sixteenth-century botanists were content simply to compile vast haphazard catalogues of plants, Cesalpino was the first..... More
Item #6089
![Item #5127 Peripateticarum Quaestionum Libri Quinque. [Bound with:] PATRIZI, Francesco....](https://sophiararebooks.cdn.bibliopolis.com/pictures/5127.jpg?width=320&height=427&fit=bounds&auto=webp&v=1603272078)
Venice; Venice: Giunta; Dominico de’ Franceschi, 1571. First edition, and a fine copy in a contemporary binding, of Cesalpino’s very rare work which coined the phrase “circulation of the blood” (circulatio sanguinis, f. 111v) and provided the theoretical basis for Harvey’s experimental and quantitative treatment in De motu cordis (1628)..... More
Item #5127
Florence: Luigi Carlieri, 1793-1794. First edition, with both folding plates, of the treatise that placed madness in the substance of the brain and then went looking for it there — Chiarugi’s three volumes on insanity, built on a hundred case histories from the Bonifazio hospital in Florence and closing on..... More
Item #4906
Manchester: S. Russell for R. Bickerstaff; Russell & Allen for R. Bickerstaff; Executives of S. Russell for G. Wilson, 1808; 1810; 1827. First edition, untouched in uniform original publisher’s bindings with original printed spine labels, of Dalton’s classic work on the atomic theory of matter. “Dalton reconstructed Newton's speculations on..... More
Item #5935
![Item #5839 A new system of chemical philosophy. [Bound with] On the Phosphates & Arseniates...](https://sophiararebooks.cdn.bibliopolis.com/pictures/5839.jpg?width=320&height=427&fit=bounds&auto=webp&v=1661259345)
Manchester: S. Russell for R. Bickerstaff, Strand, London; Russell & Allen for R. Bickerstaff, Strand, London; executors of S. Russell for George Wilson; John Harrison, 1808-1810-1827; 1840. First edition, complete with all three parts inscribed by Dalton, and in original publisher’s bindings with original printed spine labels, of his classic..... More
Item #5839
Paris: Guillaumin et Cie; Victor Masson et Fils, 1862. First edition in French of Darwin’s Origin, translated with his authorisation from the third English edition of 1861, and the most disputed of its early translations — rendered, prefaced, footnoted, retitled, and intellectually re-framed by Clémence Royer, the self-taught philosopher, economist..... More
Item #6677
London: John Murray, 1874. First edition, first issue of the book in which Darwin finally gave his public account of two ideas he had withheld from the Origin of Species: the descent of Homo sapiens from pre-existing forms, and — his more original and more contested contribution — the mechanism..... More
Item #6679
Cambridge: [the University Press for the Cambridge Philosophical Society], 1835. First edition, very rare, of Darwin’s first separately printed work — the thirty-one-page pamphlet in which John Stevens Henslow, Cambridge Regius Professor of Botany, Darwin’s mentor and the man who had secured him his berth on the Beagle, printed selected..... More
Item #6395
![Item #5804 Note sur la monomanie-homicide. [With:] Aliénation mentale, Des illusions chez les...](https://sophiararebooks.cdn.bibliopolis.com/pictures/5804.jpg?width=320&height=427&fit=bounds&auto=webp&v=1660219750)
Paris & London; Paris; Paris & London: J.-B. Baillière; Crochard; J.-B. Baillière, 1827:1832;1838. First editions in original wrappers of three rare works, two of which are inscribed presentation copies, by the founder, together with Philippe Pinel, of the French school of psychiatry. “Esquirol was one of the first to apply..... More
Item #5804
Paris: Simon de Colines, 1545. First edition, a large-paper copy — with every one of its pinholes preserved along the fore-edge, from the library of Haskell F. Norman — of “one of the finest woodcut books of the French Renaissance” (Schreiber) and “the most magnificent anatomical atlas of the sixteenth..... More
Item #6596