‎Oliver, Jamie‎
‎One‎

‎Acta Medica & Philosophica Hafniensia. Ann. 1671&16721673 1674.1675.1676." 1677.1678. 1679. Cum aeneis figuris/Figuris aeneis illustrata. 5 vols (all). - [ONE OF THE FIRST MEDICAL PERIODICALS]‎

‎Copenhagen, Peter Haubold, 1673-80. 4to. A very nice recent full calf pastiche binding with four raised bands and gilt red title-label to spine. blindstamped borders to boards. Old owner's inscription (""Sven Borgh/Lund 1840"") to title-page. A very nice and clean copy with only a bit of brownspotting and some evenly browned leaves. A tear (with no loss) to one leaf and one leaf (vol. V, L3) with a neat marginal restoration, far from affacting text. The following two leaves with minor loss to blank upper margin (far from affecting text). The large double-page folded plate with Stensen's lymphatic glands (vol. II, p. 240) with a neat restoration to verso, no loss. Annotations and corrections in the same early, neat hand throughout. Woodcut vignettes and initials. All four title-pages (part III & IV have a joint title-page) printed in red and black. (16), 316" (20), 376 (16), 174, 216" (8), 342 pp. With ab. 60 woodcut illustrations in the text, many of them quite large, two of them full-page, and all 62 engraved plates (of which two are on a folded leaf), four of which are folded. A truly excellent, fully complete copy with all five volumes and all 62 plates.‎

‎The very rare first edition of all five volumes of Bartholin's groundbreaking medical journal, which constitutes the first scientific periodical in Scandinavia and one of the very first medical periodicals in the world. Thomas Bartholin (1616-1680) was one of the leading physicians of his time, now remembered, among many other things, as the discoverer of the lymphatic system. He ""was the most celebrated physician of his period in Denmark and perhaps in all of Europe"". (Kronick, p. 81). He is considered ""a typical representative of the ""Curiosi naturae"" of the 17th century with all their learning, diligence and insatiable spirit of curiosity... He belonged with all his heart to the learned period, and yet he made an anatomical-physiological discovery of high mark when he found, and demonstrated, a hitherto entirely unknown vascular system in animals, and later in man - the lymphatic."" (Meisen, p. 25). He was a hugely influential and extremely productive man. Apart from his seminal discovery of the lymphatic system, he wrote a number of highly influential treatises, published a series of very influential anatomical papers, published his vast correspondence with other scientists, which has the character of a scientific archive at a time when there were not yet periodicals of natural science, provided us with the most extensive information about medicine in Denmark and about the conditions of the physicians, called attention to the significance of pathological anatomy, etc., etc., and ""[y]et the greatest importance is to be attached to his ""Acta medica philosophica Hafniensia"", in 5 volumes, that was published from 1673 to 1680, when he died. It is a scientific periodical, wide in its scope, one of the first of its kind."" (Meisen, p. 28). ""The Copenhagen biologists, under the quickening influence of Thomas Bartholin, produced five volumes of transactions known as the Acta medica et philosophica Hafniensia, which is now very rare."" (Hagenströmer)The leading contributors to the periodical, besides Bartholin himself, was the great Niels Steensen (Steno), Holger Jacobsen (Jacobaeus), Caspar Bartholin, Ole Borch (Borrichius), Ole Worm, Simon Paulli, Johan Rohde, Caspar Kölichen, etc., but the contributions were not confined to Danes or Scandinavians. For instance, the English anatomist Edward Tyson (1650-1708) also published here, as did several other internationally famous physicians and scientists. Interestingly, the ""Acta Hafniensia"", as it is known, has a great focus on the odd and curious, the astounding and marvelous, the unnatural and abnormal. Thorndike claims that ""Monsters and freaks of nature receive perhaps the most attention."" (vol. VIII, p. 234). However, the journal was far from limited to this. ""Thomas Bartholin describes the male mandrill illustrated by three anatomical plates (Male genitalia) and a figure of the entire animal, which had died of disease in the Royal Menagerie. Holger Jacobsen describes the scorpion, the salamander, snakes, several birds, the heron and the parrot (based on dissections and figures by Steno). He also investigated the fascinating and unique anatomical puzzle of the tongue of the black woodpecker (with plate). He gives an exceptionally interesting account of the mole cricket, Gryllotalpa, which is important as being one of the first in which the elongated segmental heart of insects is described and figured. This memoir is a commendable piece of zootomical research, and it is all the more outstanding because the subject of it was an invertebrate (Cole). The most outstanding contributions in the entire periodical, however, are the 12 by Niels Steensen (Steno), which are all printed here for the first time. Steensen was the most gifted of Bartholin's disciples, and when he returned to Denmark in 1672, he immediately took up anatomical demonstrations and dissections, the fruits of which he published here, in the first three volumes of the ""Acta Hafniensia"". His contributions constitute important finds in the fields of The Brain, The Heart, The Muscles and General Embryology. ""Steno's dissections of the muscles of the eagle, Aquila (1673) is one of the most remarkable essays in zootomy published up to his time, and it is perhaps more detailed and reliable than almost any other."" (Cole). (Gosch 24).In the paper ""Embryo monsto affinis Parisiis dissectus"" (Gosch 15), we have the first known description of the ""tetralogy of Fallot"" (Garrison & Morton no 2726.1). ""Bartholin was the most celebrated physician of his period in Denmark and perhaps in all of Europe. He was professor of anatomy at the University of Copenhagen and later became Dean of its Medical Faculty. The publication seems also to have associated with the activities of a scientific society, although there seems to be little evidence for Neuberger's statement that the ""Acta"" were the proceedings of this society. The preface to the translation of the ""Acta"" which are included in the ""Collection Académique"" gives the following account of its origins: ""The Academy of Copenhagen was founded by Frederick III, who was aware how much glory it brought to him and to Denmark by encouraging the sciences and by attracting and holding scientists in his kingdom. One finds little to clarify the history of this academy, even in the five published volumes. The editing of the memoirs was principally under the care of Bartholin, the first Dane to publish medical observations. His aim was first to make a collection which embraced all parts of science"" but, deterred by the immensity of the task, he limited himself to the different parts of medicine and to those observations that were offered to him. His sponsor was Count Griffenfeld, the grand chancellor of Denmark, who obtained an edict enjoining all Danish physicians to render exact correspondence with the Dean of the Faculty of Copenhagen and to inform him of all singularities in medicine and natural history observed in different parts of the kingdom. Bartholin had great hopes for this collection and one can truly find in the five volumes which he published many discoveries which would have been lost or perhaps not have existed if this correspondence had not brought them to light and encouraged him."" The ""Acta"" consisted primarily in short original observations on medical and natural scientific subjects, although it also contained a few abstracts of books."" (Kronick p. 81). Waller: 712 (listing only 39 plates)Wellcome: II, p. 108 (listing 61 plates)Gosch: III, pp 58-59 & I, pp. 137-38Hagströmer Library has only vols. I-IVBartholin papers: Gosch: Bartholin 30-43Steensen-papers: Gosch: Steno 15-26" Garrison&Morton: 2726.1Cole, F.J.: A History of Comparative Anatomy, pp 369-93Thorndike: History of Magic and Experimental Science, vol. VIII, Chapter 30Kronick, David A.: A History of Scientific and Technical Periodical 1665-1790, p. 57 & pp. 80-82Meisen: Prominent Danish Scientists through the Ages, pp. 25-28‎

‎De morte Christi & propria cogitanda libri tres. Eiusdem de studio divinae et humanae philosophiae libri duo. - [REVIVING SCEPTICISM - ONE OF THE EARLIEST INTERPRETATIONS OF THE MEANING OF THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA]‎

‎Bologna: Benedictus Hectoris, 1497. 4to. Early limp vellum (around 1600-1650) with handwritten title to spine. A very fine and clean copy, internally as well as externally. Nice crisp, clean, and fresh pages, with only very light occasional minor brownspotting. A small tear to the last page, not repaired, and no loss. The colouring of the initials has gone through on some versos, but there is no obscuring of text. Handwritten ex libris to the first page (Collegii Parisiensis Societatis, 1688), an early handwritten note to pasted-down front end-paper, as well as a shelf mark, a printed late nineteenth-century Italian bookseller's description and the small book-label of William Le Queux. Handcoloured blue and red initials, and other capitals touched in yellow. 72 leaves. A lovely copy of a beautiful and charming book. FROM THE LIBRARY OF WILLIAM LE QUEUX. ""William Le Queux was a famous journalist, writer and celebrated novelist, a master of the spy genre, and a vociferous critic of Britain's weak military defences before the First World War, known at the time and for the next twenty years as ""The Great War"".He is acknowledged as the principal precursor of that famous spy story author of the second half of the twentieth century, namely Ian Fleming.""See:Schill, ""Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola und die Entdeckung Amerikas"", 1929"" Popkin: ""The History of Scepticism. From Savonarola to Bayle"", 2003"" Schmitt: ""Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola (1469-1533) and his critique of Aristotle"", 1967"" Copenhaver & Schmitt: ""Renaissance Philosophy"", 1992"" Garin: Italian Humanism"", 1965.‎

‎Exceedingly scarce first edition of the two highly important works ""On Remembering the Death of Christ and Oneself"", which is dedicated to Savonarola in the year before he was condemned and hanged, and ""On the Study Divine and Human Philosophy"", being Gianfranceso Pico's seminal first philosophical work, in which the foundation for his philosophical theories are laid and which foreshadows the scepticism of his ""Examen"", for which he became famous as the first modern Sceptic. The present publication is furthermore the first in which Gianfr. Pico refers to the discovery of America"" the work was written merely a couple of years after Columbus' discovery became known - printed a mere three years after the Columbus Letter - and Pico's references in the present work constitute one of the first testimonies to the awareness of the meaning and importance of the discovery of the New World and is considered a highly important piece of 15th century Americana. The present publication is of the utmost importance to Renaissance thought and the development of the modern world. It constitutes one of the earliest testimonies to the general influence of the discovery of America upon contemporary Europe as well as being the first serious attempt we have of reviving the Scepticism of Sextus Empiricus and utilizing it in modern thought, providing a seminal premonition of the exact way that scepticism was to be used ab. 70 years later. Pico also directly influenced the translators of the first printed edition of any of Sextus' writings (1560's). Giovanni Francesco [Gianfranceso] Pico della Mirandola (1470-1533), not to be confused with his uncle Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) was a highly important Renaissance thinker and philosopher, who was strongly influenced by the Neoplatonic tradition, but even more so by the preaching of Girolamo Savonarola, whose thought he defended throughout his life. The first of the two treatises printed here ""De morte Christi & propria cogitanda"" is the first work that Pico dedicates to Savonarola, the year before his condemnation, and it marks his lifelong devotion to the prophetic Renaissance preacher. As Schill points out, this important treatise was finished at the most three years after Columbus' discovery of America became known. It is the first treatise in which Pico mentions and treats the seminal discovery, an interest that he was to maintain throughout all of his later writings. Gianfr. Pico was very well connected, not least through the merits of his uncle, and he keeps appearing in close connection with the most important and famous early scholars, historians, publicizers and popularizers of the discovery of America. For instance, he was a close friend and correspondent of Matthaeus Ringmann, the man who gave to America its name. As such, Pico played an important role in the earliest history of the discovery of America, both due to his influential connections and due to his insightful reflections upon this discovery and the meaning it would have and had on man, his relationship to Christ, God, and the Universe. The work deals with the discovery in the most interesting way, enrolling it in man's relation to the universe and to God. It is a religious-moral treatise on the duty of man to remember Christ's death and his own. Gianfr. Pico establishes an inner connection in man with the human nature of Christ and uses the discovery of this new part of the world to express the limitless inner connection of man with Christ. The effect that the Columbus Letter (1493) had upon the people of the Renaissance - the wondrous astonishment that this discovery affected, although at the time it was merely thought to be a discovery of a continent that had been known since Antiquity, namely Asia - can only properly be understood when reading the earliest sources of this discovery. Pico was among the very first to describe what this discovery meant to man, and his work is an invaluable source to the early history of the discovery of America. He inscribed Columbus' discovery in Christianity and in man's inner relation to Christ. He explains how, through unceasing pious contemplation and a true, inner, heartfelt urge, it will be possible for man to obtain an inner connection with Christ. ""And it does not even require great effort. It is not about reaching India"" not to explore the erithrean shores […] On the contrary, we are drawn to him by a natural force."" (De morte Christi). ""And thus, the younger Pico here appears from the very beginning as a diverse and stimulating character, who does not refrain from weaving in to his pious or learned discussions experiences of daily life and contemporary history as examples and comparisons, and which due to this very fact also becomes an unerring mirror for the true, inner participation of the intellectual upper class of Europe in such events that concern us here."" (Own translation from the German of Schill, p. 20). Shill provides many further examples of Pico mentioning and using Columbus' discovery in this his first work and the importance the work thus comes to have on our knowledge of the earliest understanding of the consequences of the discovery. ""Even where he doesn't directly mention the discoveries, suddenly allusions to them appear woven into a biblical or otherwise spiritual quotation, be it involuntary, or be it intentionally, providing a special emotional momentum."" (Own translation from the German of Schill, p. 22). Just like his uncle, Gianfr. Pico devoted his life to philosophy, but being a follower of Savonarola and having a Christian mission, he made it subject to the Bible. He even depreciated the authority of the philosophers, above all of Aristotle. ""His [i.e. Gianfrancesco Pico] uncle and his uncle's circle of Florentine friends were important influences on the younger Pico, who also continued the older philosopher's devotion to Savonarola, even after Florence tired of him in 1498. Gianfrancesco lived longer than his uncle, from 1469 to 1533, but he spent much of his time fighting his relatives to keep the little princedom that he bought from Giovanni in 1491, so his published output of more than thirty works, about a third of them philosophical, is remarkable. Savonarola taught him to exclude reason from religion and to distrust philosophers as infidels, and Gianfrancesco modified the friar's views mainly by reinforcing them with his greater learning. As early as 1496 [written in 1496, printed in 1497], in one of his first works, ""On the Study of Divine and Human Philosophy"", he distinguished divine philosophy, rooted in scripture, from human philosophy based on reason"" he denied that Christians need human wisdom, which is as likely to hinder as to help the quest for salvation."" (Copenhaver & Schmitt, p. 245). This seminal treatise, one of his very first productions, and the earliest philosophical one that he wrote, sharply differentiated human philosophy, based on reason, from divine philosophy, based on scripture, and dismissed human and rational philosophy as useless, and perhaps even harmful. It is to those means that Gianfr. Pico, as the first thinker since Antiquity, uses the teachings of Sextus Empiricus. Even the violent condemnation, hanging, and burning of Savonarola in the main square of Florence in 1498 did not prevent Pico from spreading his radical views. ""At the very beginning of the 16th century [recte end of the 15th], Gian Francesco Pico, the nephew of Pico della Mirandola, had predicted the final failure of all attempts at reconciliation of the different philosophical movements. Gian Francesco Pico was a thinker of very considerable stature and a follower of Savonarola. There was a touch of tragedy about his personality. For his life was suspended, as it were, between the scaffold of Savonarola and incessant family feuds - in the course of one of which he was finally killed. No wonder that he borrowed from the scepticism of Sextus Empiricus in order to destroy philosophy to make more room for religion."" (Garin, p. 133). Gianfr. Pico, a learned scholar and apt reader of classical texts, was the first Renaissance thinker that we know to have seriously studied and used the works of Sextus Empiricus, which were not printed until the 1560'ies, causing a revolution in Renaissance thinking. ""The printing of Sextus in the 1560s opened a new era in the history of scepticism, which had begun in the late fourth century BCE with the teachings of Pyrrho of Elis. [...] Before the Estienne and Hervet editions, Sextus seems to have had only two serious students, Gianfrancesco Pico at the turn of the century and Francesco Robortello about fifty years later."" (Copenhaver & Schmitt, pp. 240-41). ""No significant use of Pyrrhonian ideas prior to the printing of Sextus' ""Hypotyposes"" has turned up, except for that of Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola [...] His writings may seem isolated from the main development of modern skepticism that began with the publication of the Latin translations and modernized formulation of ancient scepticism offered by Michel de Montaigne. However, they represent a most curious use of skepticism that reappears in the early seventeenth century with Joseph Mede and John Dury and the followers of Jacob Boehme and in the early eighteenth century in the writings of the Chevalier Ramsay, the first patron of David Hume, to fortify or justify prophetic knowledge."" (Popkin, p. 20). Gianfr. Pico develops his sceptical arguments to their fullest extent in his ""Examen"" (1520), which is considered his main work. However, the foundation of all these ideas are laid in the present work, which must be considered, not only his first philosophical treatise and the beginning of all of his philosophy, but also one of, if not the, earliest printed testimonies to the use of scepticism and a premonition of the role that skepticism came to play in Renaissance thought, primarily after the first printings of Sextus in the 1560'ies. ""No discovery of the Renaissance remains livelier in modern philosophy than scepticism"". (Copenhaver & Schmitt, p. 338). ""The revived skepticism of Sextus Empiricus was the strongest single agent of disbelief"". (ibid., p. 346). In the writings of his last years (1492-94) Giovanni Pico, Gianfr. Pico's famous uncle, known as the ""Phoenix of his age"", had moved closer to the views of Savonarola and became a follower of Savonarola's religious reform movement just before his death. Gianfr. Pico was heavily influenced both by his uncle and by Savonarola, with whom he became involved in 1492, being attracted to his ideas and probably also by the anti-intellectual tendencies of the movement. Thus, in the middle of the 1490'ies, at the very beginning of his career, Gianfr. was clearly resolved to discredit all of the philosophical tradition of pagan antiquity. ""Gianfrancesco Pico's first writing on philosophy [i.e. De Studio Divinae & Humanae], completed during Savonarola's period as spiritual leader of Florentine democracy, sought to delineate the difference between (true) Christian knowledge and pagan and non-Christian opinions.[...] Pico's later attitudes apparently held the seeds of the antiphilosophy developed by his nephew."" (Popkin, pp. 20-21). ""Pico was visited by Johannes Reuchlin in 1490 and showed him his kabbalistic materials. His nephew, Gianfrancesco Pico, already a disciple of Savonarola, was making the views of Sextus Empiricus available in Latin and also became involved with Reuchlin."" (Popkin, 25). ""As the only Greek Pyrrhonian sceptic whose works survived, he [Sextus Empiricus] came to have a dramatic role in the formation of modern thought. The historical accident of the rediscovery of his works at precisely the moment when the sceptical problem of the criterion had been raised gave the ideas of Sextus a sudden and greater prominence than they had ever before or were ever to have again. Thus, Sextus, a recently discovered oddity, metamorphosed into ""le divin Sexte"", who, by the end of the seventeenth century, was regarded as the father of modern philosophy. Moreover, in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the effect of his thoughts upon the problem of the criterion stimulated a quest for certainty that gave rise to the new rationalism of René Descartes and the ""constructive skepticism"" of Pierre Gassendi and Martin Mersenne."" (Popkin, p. 18).""The revival of ancient philosophy was particularly dramatic in the case of scepticism. This critical and anti-dogmatic way of thinking was quite important in Antiquity, but in the Middle Ages its influence faded [...] when the works of Sextus and Diogenes were recovered and read alongside texts as familiar as Cicero's ""Academia"", a new energy stirred in philosophy"" by Montaigne's time, scepticism was powerful enough to become a major force in the Renaissance heritage prepared for Descartes and his successors."" (Copenhaver & Schmitt, pp. 17-18). But not only in being the first serious attempt that we have of reviving the Scepticism of Sextus Empiricus, was Gianfr. Pico's work on divine and human philosophy of great importance to the development of Renaissance thought. The entire foundation upon which the work is based - a sharp differentiation between human philosophy (reason) and divine philosophy (scripture) - comes to play a dominant role in the development of 16th century Renaissance thought. The work, ""dedicated to Alberto Pio of Carpi, shows certain indications of Savonarola's influence and gives us the first glimpse of Pico's unfavourable attitude toward secular philosophy, a viewpoint which will be developed in greater detail in his ""Examen Vanitatis"", published in 1520. (Schmitt, p. 50).""Throughout the early modern period, from Ficino and Pico to Newton and Leibniz, such convictions [of the unity of truth) supported a pattern of historiography that could never have emerged without the humanists, even though it did not preserve their fame for modern times. Other myths of classicism and Christianity outlived the fable of ancient theology because they conflicted less flagrantly with the findings of historyThe purpose of the ancient theology was to sanctify learning by connecting it with a still more ancient source of gentile wisdom that reinforces sacred revelation. Rather than baptize the heathens as Ficono or the older Pico wished, some early modern critics damned them, and one of the most aggressive thinkers of this school was the younger Pico. He saw an impassable gulf between Christian and pagan belief where his uncle had tried to build bridges."" (Copenhaver & Schmitt, p. 337). BMC VI:843" Goff: P644 ‎

‎One Zh. Mother-in-law. A novel in 5 chapters, Georges Ohnet by Georges One. Tra‎

‎One Zh. Mother-in-law. A novel in 5 chapters, Georges Ohnet by Georges One. Translation by K.A. Tarnovsky and E.E. Mattern. M. Pechatnya by S.P. Yakovlev, 1884. 1202s. 23,5x16.5 sm./One Zh. Teshcha. Roman v 5-ti glavakh, Zhorzha One Georges Ohnet. Perevod K.A. Tarnovskogo i E.E. Matterna. M. Pechatnya S.P. Yakovleva, 1884. 1202s. 23,5x16,5 sm. One Z. Mother-in-law. A novel in 5 chapters, Georges Ohnet by Georges One. Translation by K.A. Tarnovsky and E.E. Mattern. M. Pechatnya by S.P. Yakovlev, 1884. 1202c. We have thousands of titles and often several copies of each title may be available. Please feel free to contact us for a detailed description of the copies available. SKUbd-1a88ac2ae58a774b.‎

‎De dissectione partium corporis humani. - [ONE OF THE FINEST OF ALL ANATOMICAL TREATISES]‎

‎Paris, Simon de Colines, 1545. Folio. 17th century full mottled calf, neatly rebacked preserving the old spine. Title-page a bit dusty and strengthened at inner margin, on blank verso. A small closed tear to inner margin of 2nd leaf, no loss. Last leeaf with a repair to lower corner, no loss of text. Last three pages a bit dusty. A few repaired marginal tears, no loss. Light age yellowing and here and there some soiling and spotting (presumably due to medical use). All in all a good, well-margined copy. (24), 375, (1) pp. Printer's device to title-page, lovely woodcut initials, 62 full-page anatomical woodcuts, and ab. 100 sall medical illustrations to the text. With the 16t century autograph owner signature of Robert Westhawe to title-page and the manuscript ex libris of William Paschall (dated October 1646) to verso of last leaf. Wit Paschall's occasional marginalia.‎

‎The very rare first edition of one of the most important works in the history of medicine, being the first published work to include illustrations of the whole external venous, arterial, and nervous systems, and the most magnificent anatomical atlas of the sixteenth century, next to Vesalius' ""Fabrica"". Although the work was published two years after Vesalius', the anatomy itself is pre-Vesalian and antedates the ""Fabrica"" by some years in actual composition. ""This magnificent folio volume is one of the finest of all anatomical treatises."" (Heirs of Hippocrates). ""One of the finest woodcut books of the French Renaissance, in which science and art are ideally merged."" (Schreiber). It is down to coincidence and a complicated lawsuit that Vesalius's anatomy appeared before Estienne's and thus stole the thunder.Charles Estienne was a member of the famous family of printers (and scholars) bearing the same name. He received his medical degree from the University of Paris of 1542, but had been at work on this his anatomical magnum opus for many years. When Charles's father died in 1520, his mother married Simon de Colines, the famous printer, who also published the present work. It was in Colines's house that Charles Estienne found many of the valuable woodblocks that serve as basis for the magnificent illustrations in the ""De Dissectione"". The work is divided into three parts, the first two illustrated with full-page woodcuts, the third with smaller woodcut figures in the text. The first woodcut in the text is signed ""S.R."", presumably referring to Stephanus Riverus (Estienne de la Riviere), Charles Estienne's friend and co-producer of this magnificent work. Riviere, who was at the time surgeon, artist, and engraver, is supposed to have prepared the drawings for the anatomical details. Eight of the woodcuts are signed by Jean Jollat, a celebrated Parisian engraver. Several of the Jollat blocks bear the dates 1530, 1531, and 1532 and a cutter's signature that points to the workshop of the eminent artist and typographer Geofroy Tory. Most of the magnificent full-page figures have the anatomical portions on separate smaller wood-blocks inserted into the large one. These artistically drawn figures are also interesting in themselves. They are shown in unusual poses against unusual backgrounds. Some are depicted hooked up on trees, sprawling in great chairs, etc. Almost all of them are quite remarkable and many are morbid. They were seemingly all created around 1530 when the first woodcut is dated. Presumably they then came into the possession of Simon de Colines and Geofroy Troy, who was his favourite engraver, who may have wanted to use them for an anatomical atlas for artists. There may have been be several different reasons why Collines never used them, but still kept them in his printing house. In 1538 Charles Estienne, who was a surgeon, decided together with Estienne de la Riviere to prepare a new book of anatomy using the highly valuable, but hitherto discarded, blocks which lay in his stepfather's printing house. Some of them were used as they were, but most of them underwent the appropriate modifications by means of insets. Riviere presumably dissected a corpse to serve as a model for the skeleton figures, and may also have contributed the anatomical details for the insets. Anyway, in 1539, Riviere lodged a complaint before the Parliament against Charles Estienne's claiming of the author's right. This lawsuit delayed the publication of the work, two-thirds of which had already been printed, and only in 1541 could it be submitted to the Faculty of Medicine for approval. ""Had ""De dissectione"" been published in 1539, there is no question that it would have stolen much of the thunder from Vesalius' ""Fabrica..."". Despite its tardy appearance, however, ""De dissectione"" was able tomake numerous original contributions to anatomy, including the first published illustrations of the whole external and venous nervous systems, and descriptions of the morphology and purpose of the ""feeding holes"" of bones, the tripartite composition of the sternum, the valvulae in the hepatic veins and the scrotal septum. In addition, the work's eight dissections of the brain give more anatomical detail than had previously appeared"" (Norman).In the preface, Estienne tells that printing was interrupted in 1539 and complains of plagiarism during the six years that the work was delayed. ""The costly book was eventually published in 1545, followed in 1546 by the French edition. By that time, however, Vesalius had stolen the show... Herrlinger means that Vesalius profited from Estienne's illustrations after having encountered them during his stay in Paris from 1533 to 1536, when the majority of the woodcuts were already completed."" (Hagelin).No matter what, the quality of the plates is extraordinary, and combined with the text, the importance of this work in the history of medicine and art is overwhelming. Choulant describes the work of the engravers as ""particularly excellent"", and the text ""is particularly significant from the view point of the history of anatomic discoveries, since Estienne himself was a dissector and began his work long before Vesalius"" (Choulant).""Estienne's best department is, perhaps that of arthrology. He was the first to trace blood vessels into the substance of bone. He was the first to remark upon the valves of the veins. Most remarkable of his observations is that of the canal in the spinal cord."" (Singer).The present copy has a highly interesting provenance:ROBERT WESTHAW was an astrologer, prognosticator, author of almanacks, and quack doctor who flourished in the last quarter of the 16th century. His almanacks contained medical information apparently derived, in part at least, from the present volume.WILLIAM PASCHALL (1608-1670) was a pewterer in Bristol. His son, Thomas, emigrated to Philadelphia in 1684, and purchased land from William Penn. He became a prominent member of the Provincial Assembly and Common Council. The present volume may have come with his to the US. Stillwell: 626G&M: 378.Wellcome: 6076.Heirs of Hippocrates: 153.Hagelin, Rare and Important Medical Books in the Library of the Karolinska Institute. Pp. 26-31.Schreiber: 222Norman: 728.Choulant: pp. 152-55""First published work to include illustrations of the whole external venous and nervous systems."" (G&M).""Illustrated with 56 figures based upon Estienne's dissections and observations. Contains the first published illustrations presenting the venous, arterial, and nervous systems in their entirety. Five of the cuts bear the Lorraine cross, the mark of Geofroy Tory. Several of the figures are dated 1530, 1531, or 1532, and the cuts reveal that blocks showing a detail of a given area were in various instances superimposed upon a more simply drawn figure, the detail being nortised into the main cut. According to Mr. Albert E. Lownes's description of the copy in his collection, for instance, ""there are 62 full-page woodcuts, but six of them are repeated, so that there are only 56 different blocks. Thirty-eight of these have mortises with the anatomical details. Four of the blocks have two mortises."" By 1539 the work itself was completed to the middle of the last section. Although not printed until after Vesalius's ""Fabrica"", the writing of the present text antedated the latter's publication by some years."" (Stillwell). ""This magnificent folio volume is one of the finest of all anatomical treatises. Certainly it was the finest printed in France in its century, and the sixty-two full-page woodcuts, artistically presenting the anatomical subjects in special poses before unusual background settings, are unusually sumptuous and imaginative. The anatomy itself is pre-Vesalian..."" (Heirs of Hippocrates).""First edition of one of the great woodcut books of the French Renaissance and the most magnificent anatomical atlas of the sixteenth century next to Vesalius' ""Fabrica"". A French edition by the same printer followed in 1546, which has two additional full-page woodcuts... Although Estienne's anatomical atlas was published two years after the ""Fabrica"" of Vesalius, it antedates it in actual composition."" (Hagelin, p. 26). ‎

‎Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft. - [ONE OF NO MORE THAN A HANDFUL COPIES ON SPECIAL PAPER, GIVEN BY KANT TO HIS CLOSE FRIEND HASSE]‎

‎Königsberg, Friedrich Nicolovius, 1793. 8vo. In the original bluish cardboardbinding, with handwritten title to spine. Binding very neatly restored at spine and extremities. Previous owner's inscriptions to front free end-paper and title-page as well as pasted-down front end-paper. One leaf with a tiny closed tear to blank outer margin and some leaves with a single hole to the blank outer margin. Light pencil-underlinings and -markings to a few leaves. Internally clean and fresh. Printed on very heavy paper (about three times the thickness of the normal paper) and with wide margins. XX, (2), 296, (2, -errata) pp. Housed in a beautiful marbled half calf box in pastiche-style, with splendidly gilt spine and gilt morrocco title-label.‎

‎Extremely rare presentation-copy inscribed by the recipient, a close friend of Kant, Johann Gottfried Hasse, to whom Kant gave the present copy. The copy is one of no more than perhaps five copies printed on special paper of the first edition of Kant's ""Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason"", the seminal work in which he develops his religion of reason and most fully accounts for his philosophy of religion.This magnificent copy is completely unique. Not only is one of only four or five presentation-copies printed on special paper - perhaps less - that Kant himself requested from the printer, to be given to a handful of recipients"" we also know to whom it was given, namely his close friend and professor of religion Johann Gottfreind Hasse. And Hasse has not only put his ownership signature in the book, he has also noted that it was given to him by Kant in the year of publication (""Donum auctoris 1793"").We have not been able to find information anywhere about the presentation-copies of ""Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft"" specifically. There is nothing in the Kant-correspondence about that at all, and no letters to/from the publisher about them have been preserved. But we know that Kant commissioned four or five copies of ""Critik der Urtheilskraft"" on special paper and four copies of ""Critik der reinen Vernunft"". The present copy is clearly on special paper as well (about three times the size of copies on normal paper), so even though it is not mentioned anywhere, it is fair to assume that Kant also ordered about a handful copies of ""Religion..."" to be printed on special paper as well. However, this number might be smaller. As opposed to the other two books that we know he commissioned these copies of, the publication of ""Religion..."" was caught up in a controversy over censorship, and Kant was given a reprimand in the name of the Prussian emperor, Friedrich Wilhelm II. Kant was forced to pledge not to publish on matters of religion. Furthermore, copies of the ""Religion..."" on special paper seem not to have appeared anywhere, as opposed to the very few copies of the two other works that have surfaced"" so all in all, there is absolutely no reason to think that he should have commissioned more than four or five copies of this book either. The inscription to the front free end-paper is in Hasse's hand and reads ""(Donum auctoris 1793.)/ J.G. Hasse"". The name of Hasse has been crossed out by the later owner, who has written his name underneath ""N. Grosch...(?)/ stud. Theol./ Som[mer]. Semest[er]. [18]05"" and on the title-page.The Königsberg professor J.G. Hasse (1759-1806) was a close friend of Kant and a frequent guest at his dinner table. He was a then famous German evangelist theologian and orientalist. After having graduated from the University of Jena in 1784, he became assistant professor at the faculty of philosophy there. Due to his very respected publications within science of religion, he became professor of oriental languages and later professor of theology, which is the position he possessed, when Kant gave him the present copy of his own main work on religion. A few years later, in 1801, he took over Kant's position at the academic Senate, after Kant retired from academic life. And in the last years of Kant's life, Hasse grew even closer to him. He was a frequent guest in his home and a close friend. Hasse was furthermore one of the first to publish a biography of Kant. This biography became particularly famous, because it was written by someone in the inner circle of friends. There is no doubt that Kant had tremendous respect for the renowned professor of religion, to whom he gave one of the only four or five copies printed on special paper of his own definitive work on religion. This is presumably the best presentation- or association-copy of a Kant-book that one can hope to come across. Warda: 141.‎