First Edition of “the Most Accurate Neuroanatomical Work Produced before the Advent of Microscopic Staining Techniques”
Traité d'anatomie et de physiologie. avec des planches coloriées répresentant au naturel les divers organes de l'homme et des animaux. Tome premier [all published].
Paris: François Ambroise Didot l'aîné, 1786.
Full Description:
VICQ D’AZYR, Félix. Traité d’anatomie et de physiologie, avec des planches coloriées répresentant au naturel les divers organes de l’homme et des animaux. Dédié au Roi...Tome premier [all published]. Paris: De l’Imprimerie de Franç[ois] Amb[roise] Didot l’aîné, 1786.
First edition. Large folio (18 3/4 x 11 7/8 inches; 472 x 300 mm.). [10], 17, [3], [19]-87, [3], [89]-111, [1, blank], 123, [1, blank] pp. Eratta slip tipped in to page 17. Complete with five divisional titles. Aquatint frontispiece printed in colors and finished by hand, accompanied by an engraved leaf of explanation by Beaublé, and sixty-nine plates, numbered I-XXXV, consisting of thirty-four plates engraved with a combination of aquatint, line-engraving, and stipple-engraving and printed in colors, thirty-four accompanying uncolored outline plates with figures serving as key to the explanations of the plates, and one uncolored outline plate (No. XVIII) copied from Samuel Thomas von Soemmerring’s De basi encephali (1778). Tissue guards. Plates drawn and engraved by Alexandre Briceau, “dessinateur du cabinet d’anatomie de l‘École Royale Vétérinaire.” Also with the publisher's prospectus laid in.
Late eighteenth-century brown quarter calf over marbled boards. Spine stamped in gilt. Brown leather spine label, lettered in gilt. All edges speckled red and dyed yellow. Some cracking to spine label. Hinges with some rubbing and minor cracking but holding firm. Board edges with some rubbing and bumping. Some minor scattered spotting, not affecting plates. Two previous owner's bookplates to front pastedown. An excellent and complete copy. Complete copies are rare.
“Vicq d’Azyr, permanent secretary to the Paris Academy of Medicine and personal physician of Marie Antoinette, produced one of the most outstanding anatomical folios of the brain that had yet appeared. He found that his dissections of the brain were facilitated by first hardening the brain in alcohol. He identified accurately for the first time many of the cerebral convolutions, along with various internal structures of the brain. Vicq d’Azyr (1781) described the mammillothalmic tract which still bears his name, as well as the central sulcus with the pre- and post-central convolutions and insula twenty years before Reil and Roland” (McHenry, pp. 104-105).
“The above volume, all that was published of Vicq d’Azyr‘s projected study of anatomy and physiology, contains his entire corpus of studies of the brain, representing the most accurate neuroanatomical work produced before the advent of microscopic staining techniques. The prospectus for Traité d’anatomie...stated that the work would be published in fascicles, with the first fascicle appearing in October 1785, The work appeared in eight parts, the text in three parts and the plates in five; the prospectus stated that each fascicle of plates would consist of six plates, six outline plates and one or more leaves of explanation...The author emphasized in the prospectus that he wanted to give purchasers complete freedom to purchase any or all parts of the work that they wanted, and that there would be no published list of subscribers. Those who did decide to subscribe were requested to keep their parts unbound until they received instructions telling them in what order to bind the parts. These instructions were probably never issued, as publication of the planned multi-volume work was interrupted by the French Revolution and the death of the author...The unusually luxurious quality of this work and the unbusinesslike way in which Vicq d’Azyr permitted purchasers to acquire separate parts of the work strongly suggest that he financed its publication” (Norman Library).
Brunet V, col. 1176. Garrison and Morton 401.2 (“the most accurate neuroanatomical work produced before the advent of microscopic staining techniques”). Norman Library 2150. Waller 9953.
HBS 69510.
$17,500.
Price: $17,500.00
Item #69510