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Small 4to. [v], x, [liv], [2] pp. 3 folding engraved plates â " the three folded plates are signed: "J. Mynde sc. "; the frontispiece is signed "I Fayram inven. deli et sculp." Modern half speckled calf, gilt-stamped spine title, marbled boards. PROVENANCE: Early armorial bookplates (in facsimile, but correct), of J.W. Glaisher, Thomas Salwey, [later]: The Francis Galton Laboratory, and the ownership mark of "FND" for Florence Nightingale David [University College London, UC Riverside & UC Berkeley]. David presented this book to statistician Margaret Stein (married to fellow statistician Charles Stein). Rare. THE FIRST CROONIAN LECTURE WITH AN EXTRAORDINARY PROVENANCE. Three lectures delivered by Stuart to the Royal Society regarding muscular motion of the heart. The first lecture concerns the elasticity of blood vessels and non-elasticity of nerves. The second lecture relates to the distribution of nerves, arteries, and veins in the muscles of the arm. The third lecture relates to aeration of the blood. These were the first three Croonian Lectures delivered to the Royal Society. Also issued as part of: "Philosophical transactions . . . Vol. XL. For the years 1737, 1738." / Stuart received the Croonian Medal "For his Lectures on Muscular Motion. As a further addition for his services to the Society in the care and pains he has taken therein". / This paper was published in 1739, 3 years after Stuart retired. The paper was the very first Croonian Lecture, 1738. The Croonian Medal and Lecture is a prestigious award, a medal, and lecture given at the invitation of the Royal Society and the Royal College of Physicians. In the paper Stuart offers 10 propositions, he says, proved by experiments: 1) That fluids are elastic; 2) The immediate cause of the various degrees of cohesion and elasticity of solids, "is in the fluids they contain"; 3) he purports that gravity, cohesion, elasticity and hydrostatics are "one and the same"; 4) he equates "immaterial impulse" to the "motions of the universe"; 5) There is no "natural centrifugal power in matter . . . "; 6) "That repulse . . . appears to be solely an effect of central attraction"; 7) "That arteries of elastic . . . "; 8) "That veins are also elastic"; 9) That blood is an elastic fluid"; 10) "That the nerves are not elastic". / "The late learned and famous Dr. Croune having observed how much the knowledge of the animal oeconomy depends upon the doctrine of the nerves and muscles, and how far the rational practice of physic might be improved by a more Perfect acquaintance with the animal oeconomy, did, for the encouragement of these, studies, form a plan for instituting certain Lectures to be read on such subjects, in the Royal College of Physicians on the nerves and muscles, and in the Royal Society on muscular motion; which was left with his Widow, afterwards Lady Sadleir." â " Preface. / "Stuart's principal concern both in his Dissertatio, and in the Croonian lectures based closely on it, was to demonstrate that a strict hydraulic iatromechanism was the best theory by which to account for muscular motion. Unlike contemporary British writers who in the 1730's advanced theories of muscular action based on the wavelike movement of animal spirits and the jiggling of elastic nerve fibers, Stuart insisted that the mechanics of sanguinary and nervous fluids, and of their vessels, alone governs the action of the muscles. The forceful flow of blood in the arteries and veins and the trickle of liquid juice through the nerves suffice to cause and control muscular motion." / "Stuart saw the muscles as an elaborate network of vessels and open spaces, in basic design not unlike the lungs. The proximate cause of systole is the elastic restitution of the walls of the muscular blood vessels, which had been expanded in a preceding diastole." â " Encyclopedia. / Alexander Stuart (1673-1742), British natural philosopher and physician, was born in Aberdeen, Scotland. He took his MA degree from Marischal.
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