SUCCENTURIATUS ANATOMICUS CONTINENS COMMENTARIA IN HIPPOCRATEM. [and] A CORNELII CELSI DE RE MEDICA

(ANATOMY, EARLY - HEAD WOUNDS). PAAW, PETRUS [PAUW, PIETER]

Published by Jodocus Colster, Lugduni Batavorum [Leyden], 1616

About this Item

207 x 155 mm. (8 1/8 x 6 1/8"). 12 p.l., 270 pp.; 1 p.l., 128 pp. Contemporary stiff vellum, yapp edges, flat spine with ink titling. Engraved portrait medallion on verso of title, 57 engraved illustrations in text (15 of these full-page), and three engraved folding plates, one of these the frontispiece. With book label of Arthur Edward Lyons laid in at front. Waller 7255; Wellcome I, 4684; Graesse V, 99. ?Minor soiling to vellum, folding plate of skeleton with neatly repaired four-inch tear (adhesive residue on blank verso, but no loss to image on recto), one leaf with faint dampstains to outer third, isolated marginal printing smudges, but A NEARLY FINE COPY of a book one would not expect to find this way--clean and fresh internally with sharp impressions of the engravings, and the unsophisticated original binding sturdy and appealing. This is the first edition of the commentary by Dutch anatomist Pieter Pauw on the writings of Hippocrates and Celsus relating to head wounds, complete with the fascinating--and often missing--folding frontispiece depicting Pauw performing a dissection before a standing-room-only audience. Pauw (1564-1617) studied medicine at the University of Leyden and travelled to Padua to study anatomy with the great Hieronymus Fabricius, before returning to his alma mater as its first professor of anatomy. At a time when dissection had only a short history as a legitimate method of studying the human body, Pauw established the first anatomical theater in the Netherlands in 1596. His dissections and lectures were open not only to students, but also to (ahem) morbidly curious paying patrons. The animated frontispiece here portrays the diversity of his audience, with some 50 spectators ranging from earnest student and scholar to fashionable man-about-town to wealthy burgher in fine attire. A skeleton holding a banner reading "Mors ultima linea rerum" ("Death is the final line of things") presides over the scene, and a couple of hounds (with a schoolboy attendant) sit in the foreground, for reasons one prefers not to contemplate. The other plates depict cranial anatomy, as well as surgical instruments and procedures for treating head wounds that inspire enormous gratitude for modern medical technology. This is a scarce work: RBH and ABSA find just four other copies at auction since 1969, two of them ex-library, one lacking the frontispiece. A complete copy with plates as fresh and bright as ours is a fortunate find. Seller Inventory # ST19904

Bibliographic Details

Title: SUCCENTURIATUS ANATOMICUS CONTINENS ...

Publisher: Jodocus Colster, Lugduni Batavorum [Leyden]

Publication Date: 1616

Edition: FIRST EDITION.