Item #117775 Observationes Medicae. Nicolaes TULP.
Observationes Medicae
Observationes Medicae
Observationes Medicae
Observationes Medicae
Observationes Medicae
Observationes Medicae
Observationes Medicae
Observationes Medicae

Observationes Medicae

Amsterdam, Apud Danielem Elsevirium [Elzevir], 1672 [third edition] ('Editio nova, libro quarto auctior, & sparsim multi in locis emendatior')/ 1641.

Small octavo, [xvi], 392 pages with a woodcut printer's device on the title page, occasional head- and tail-pieces and woodcut initials, an additional engraved pictorial title page, a portrait of the author, 18 full-page engravings (numbered I-XVIII), an unnumbered full-page engraving (page 178) and an in-text engraved illustration (on page 247). The plates include various diseased organs and anatomical illustrations, spina bifida, a chimpanzee ('Homo sylvestris - Orang-outang'), a narwhal, and two different plates of Siamese twins.

Contemporary full vellum with the author and title inscribed neatly in ink on the spine; vellum slightly rubbed and marked, with the spine unevenly discoloured; underlining in ink on 35 pages (in many instances just a word or two, and nowhere is it offensive to our eyes); contemporary relevant annotations in ink in a neat and tiny script to 14 pages (six of which also have some underlining); some offsetting and occasional light marks and foxing; trifling signs of use and age; pastedowns no longer pasted down, and the front one has been treated as the flyleaf, on the recto of which later ownership details and a bookplate have been placed; overall an excellent copy.

Heirs to Hippocrates 464 (the second edition, 1652): 'Along with other distinguished anatomists in Holland, Tulp [Nicolaes Tulp (1593-1674)], a professor of anatomy at Amsterdam, left a rich legacy of anatomical discoveries. His name is current in the eponym "Tulp's valve" (the ileocecal valve) and his face is familiar as the central figure in Rembrandt's painting, "Doctor Nicolaas Tulp Demonstrating the Anatomy of the Arm," which hangs in The Hague. The present work, Tulp's only book, was first published in 1641. This enlarged edition contains the first descriptions of beri-beri and of what is probably diphtheria. Several interesting plates complement the book, including a well-known one showing a most comically bemused chimpanzee, erroneously labeled an "orang-outang"'. The 1652 edition is digitized, and random comparisons reveal considerable differences between it and the third edition on offer here. Provenance: Professor Donald Simpson AO (1927-2018), eminent Australian neurosurgeon, with his bookplate and signature (both dated 17 August 1978). Garrison-Morton 3737 (second edition); Osler 4126 (third edition, 'with the 74 "Monita medica" added'); Waller 9717 (third edition).

Item #117775

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