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First edition of the St Omer Pharmacopoeia, an exceptionally rare book. Printed from a manuscript (hence the ‘correcta’ of the title page) it consists of 686 remedies according to the materia medica and Galenic principles. It forms part of the distinct culture of city pharmacopoeias of the Southern Netherlands — Saint Omer being a part of the Burgundian, then Spanish Netherlands until the Peace of Nijmegen in 1678.

This copy is complete with the final leaf giving the names of seven doctors and six pharmacists at St Omer: ‘Nobilissimi aeqissimi domini, Vestri Humillimi & obesrvantissimi Clientes MEDICI & PHARMACOPOEI sub scripti...’ This leaf is not mentioned by Daems & Vendewiele and is lacking in the copy digitised by the library of St Omer. The printer was Louis Carlier, whose family printed a number of works (including a handful in English) alongside the more prolific English College Press. Despite this, no member of the Carlier family is mentioned in the Répertoire d’imprimeurs/libraires (Bibliothèque nationale, new edition, 2004).

Among the preparations are theriac and mythridatium, both considered universal antidotes (or heal-alls) based on ancient recipes. The Theriaca Andromachi Senioris contains viper flesh and opium, as well as over 50 other ingredients (including spices, autumn crocus and other flowers, gums and roots). Itsrecipe was based on ancient Egyptian and classical models and by the seventeenth century its preparation was a central function of European city pharmacists, often attended by considerable ceremony and civic pride. The book also includes a list of all medicines sold in Saint Omer: ‘Taxa seu pretium medicamentorum in hac pharmacopeia contentorum’ allowing a comparison of their prices and values in French currency. Daems & Vandewiele, Noord- en Zuidnederlandse stedlijke Pharmacopoeeë (1955), 177. No copy found in KVK or Worldcat. There are two copies in the public libraries of St Omer and probably two more in the library of the Société d’histoire de la pharmacie in Paris (though not found in their online catalogue). No copy appears in the online catalogues of the Bibliothèque nationale, the Wellcome library or the National Library of Medicine.

A substantial unpublished manuscript practical treatise on obstetrics and midwifery. 39 headings (most with numerous subheadings) plus several further sections towards the end where spaces have been left for formal headings not completed (for the full list of contents see below). An entirely practical treatise, probably intended as a course of instruction for midwives, it opens with a statement of ‘Les qualités d’une Sage femme’ covering both the physical and temperamental requirements of the calling (’Qualités physiques’ and ‘Qualités morales’). Throughout this carefully prepared and presented text are found numerous references to authors of the published corpus of European works in obstetrics including the works of: [Marie-Louise] Lachapelle [1769-1821]; [Jean-Louis] Baudelocque [1746-1810]; [Franz] Naegele [1778-1851]; Madame Meyer [?] and [Antoine Louis] Dugès [1797-1838] among several others. It thus presents an interesting case study in the dissemination and reception of medical knowledge in a practical context beyond the context of formal printed texts.

Les qualités d’une Sage femme
Accouchement
Bassin en Général
Excavation
Detroit Infèrieur
Articulations du Bassin
La tête du foetus à terme
Appareil de Copulation
Vagin
Appareil de Germination
Apareil de Gestation
Changements que l’Utérus eprouve pendant les divers Mois de la Grossesse
Déplacements de l’utérus
Renversement de l’utérus
Divisions de l’Abdomen
Developpement des annexes du foetus
Membranes propres à l’Oeuf
Placenta
Le Cordon ombilical
Developpement du foetus
Fonction du foetus
Circulation foetale
Changements que la circulation eprouve pendant les divers Mois de la grossesse
Changements que la circulation foetale eprouve pendant le travail de l’Accouchement
Changements que la circulation foetale eprouve après la Naissance
De la Grossesse (with a series of direct and indirect diagnoses)
Grossesse Géméllaire
Grossesse-extra-uterine
Accouchement
Sécrétion du lait
Présentations du Foetus
Positions de la Présentation du Vertex
Présentation de la Face
Présentation du Pelvis
Description du Forceps
Avortement
Hémorrage Produite par Implantation Anomale du Placenta
Invertie Utérine
Eclampsie ou Convulsion

Joseph Rounard is listed at the address in Marseille’s Place d’Orléans from the later 1840s.

First edition, apparently transcribed from a genuine Middle English original. The title-page notes: ‘The Manuscript to be disposed of. – Apply to the Printer’. pp. 61-70 is an ‘Astronomical and Astrological Appendix’ from a work published in 1647. Caleb Stower (d. 1816) was an interesting and prolific printer with Unitarian connections.

One of a set of three Gillray prints of medical conditions that were also astute studies in facial expression.

The printer, Hannah Humphrey, is an interesting figure. Known as ‘Mrs Humphrey’ although she was unmarried, she was sister of printer William Humphrey from whose address in St Martin's Lane she published her first prints. She became the leading publisher of expensive satirical prints, especially by Gillray who worked for her exclusively from 1791, and who lived in her house for the last twenty years of his life. ‘The two lived together in circumstances of domestic intimacy for many years, but so discreetly that the prurient gossips of the next generation could find little to say against them. When Gillray made his will in 1807 he left all his possessions 'to my dearest friend Hannah Humphrey' (Oxford DNB). BM Satires 10304.

First edition of a pioneering work in the field of forensic medicine, the graphic images depict numerous conditions resulting from homicidal and suicidal injuries. The grisly and powerful photographs show skull and bone fractures, the impact of gunshot wounds, burns, injuries caused by stabbings, the effects of hanging and so on. Each set of 50 plates is accompanied by a booklet providing details of each image and the important features from the legal-medico cases from which the photographs have been obtained. Heidtmann, Bibliographie der Photographie: Deutschsprachige Publikationen, 14062. OCLC locates 4 US copies and no UK copies.

First edition, British issue, with Crosby Lockwood and Sons stamp, adverts and variant binding. An important pre-Great War account, extensively illustrated and with a final chapter on aerial warfare and its potential

A classic pre-Prohibition American cocktail book. Jacob ‘Jack’ Grohusko was the head bartender at Baracca’s restaurant in New York, having been born in England to a Russian Jewish family and brought to New York as an infant. Jack’s Manual has 17 pages on the different types of wine (particularly champagne, sauternes and burgundies) and liquor, and 61 pages of recipes for cocktails.

This 1910 edition was preceded by a very rare 1908 edition (NLM and LC only in Worldcat). Jack’s was the first cocktail book to include the Brooklyn, perhaps his own creation, and several others which would be immortalised in the much later Savoy Cocktail Book (1930).

First edition, preserved in its contemporary wrapper. A panegyric given on the Feast of Saint Louis, patron saint of France in the church, to members of the Académies royales in the church of the Oratoire. Worldcat: Newberry and Michigan only outside France.

First separate edition of Seguin’s tables of squares and cubes designed for architects and for other practical purposes. The tables were originally issued as an appendix to his Manuel d’architecture (1786) Worldcat: Cornell and Brigham Young only.

First edition of this collection of verse by the young tutor to Edward Jenner’s children, which also contains journal extracts, together with addresses and verses on the benefits of vaccination. Worgan (1790-1809) was ‘a consumptive boy of precocious ability whom Jenner took into his household, nominally as a tutor to his sons.’ Jackson, p. 344.

First published in 1865 and hugely popular, this copy of the seventh edition is from the library of Napoleon III.

A seventeenth-century manuscript copy of Dubreuil’s La Perspective Pratique necessaire a tous peintres, graveurs, sculpteurs, architectes, orfevres, brodeurs, tapissiers, & autres se servans du dessein... première partie, first published in 1642. Evidently well-used, rebound in the nineteenth-century, and to judge from the binding, still handled and used thereafter, this is a large illustrated fragment consisting of parts 1, 2 and most of 3 (of 7) of the text. The original title-page and front matter, was replaced by a simple manuscript title, probably at the time of rebinding.

La Perspective Pratique, by Jean Dubreuil ‘the Jesuit’ (1602–1670) was popular among artists, architects and designers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and was still being used by artists well into the nineteenth century as a practical introduction to perspective drawing. As the original title indicates it was intended for the use of painters, engravers, sculptors, goldsmiths, embroiderers and tapestry workers and had a very wide circulation, reprinted in numerous editions, including several in English. It proceeds from the principles of drawing simple shapes and solids in perspective, to specific objects such as chairs, tables, opening chests and shelving, then to buildings and townscapes. Each set of instructions is accompanied by detailed illustrations, which were widely copied. In the printed editions, these were presented as engraved plates opposite the letterpress text, but in this manuscript they are carefully incorporated into the text for ease of use. It seems to have been a practical handbook, extensively, but carefully handled (but not marked or annotated) over a long period of time.

Third edition (first 1771). Maude’s best-known work and a very popular poem, according to Aubin, who quotes from it extensively. The preface contains ‘his well considered observations on the nature of descriptive poetry... Like Crabbe, Maude fully realizes that the English bumpkin is too greatly harassed by cares to be the ideal poetic rustic.’ Jackson, p. 84. It occupies a curious place in the canon of works about Isaac Newton: apart from the plate depicting Newton’s paternal home, it represents the sole source for an oft-repeated anecdote of Newton’s rebuke to his pet dog Diamond (’Oh Diamond! Diamond! thou little knowest the mischief done’) for upsetting a candle and burning his papers (Gjertsen, The Newton Handbook, p. 177). The anecdote is almost certainly apocryphal. Aubin, pp. 367; Jackson p, 84.

First edition in English of the Exercitatio Anatomica De Motu Cordis (1628) in which was described the discovery and proof of the circulation of the blood. ‘The most important book in the history of medicine. Harvey proved experimentally that in animals the blood is impelled in a circle by the beat of the heart, passing from arteries to veins through pores (i.e. the capillaries, seen by Malpighi with the microscope in 1660’ (Garrison & Morton). It should also be regarded as ‘the first record of a complete biological investigation, giving a clear and accurate description of the methods employed to recognise the laws governing an important vital process, a knowledge of which had till then been befogged by mistaken conceptions...’ (H.P. Bayon in Keynes).

Harvey’s hypothesis, like almost all revolutionary hypotheses, was initially very unpopular and was widely refuted. Harvey himself admitted that his career was nearly destroyed by the publication of De Motu Cordis. However, it is interesting that he was quickly vindicated and that the circulation of the blood became accepted as irrefutable medical fact within his own lifetime, albeit towards its end. This lifetime edition in English reflects that vindication. Keynes wrote of the text ‘It gives a vigorous if unpolished, rendering of Harvey’s book in contemporary language.’

The translation is from the Rotterdam edition and includes the additional commentaries by Zachariah Wood and James De Back. This edition also contains the first English translation of Exercitio anatomica de circulatione sanguinis (of which the first edition had appeared in Latin at Cambridge in 1649) again taken from the Rotterdam edition. This is an important text in its own right, providing a restatement of Harvey’s hypothesis concerning circulation supported by further experimental proof.

This is an unusually tall copy. In most copies the headlines, and sometimes even the top lines of the text, are shaved. In this copy none of the headlines is shaved, and on some leaves the lower edge is uncut. This copy has 11 of the 13 misprints (to pagination and signatures) listed by Keynes that were corrected as the book passed through the press. In addition, F3 is mis-signed F5. It is complete with the first blank leaf. Wing H1083. Cf G&M 759, Printing and the Mind of Man 127 (the first edition of 1628). Keynes, William Harvey, 19.

First edition. A delightful collection by a prolific gastronomic author, devoted to the matter of women at table, a counterpoise to the masculinity of French gastronomy: ‘Une table sans femmes est une table sans fleurs’. This is one of 20 copies on Van Gelder, after 10 on japon (total edition 400).

A rare satirical elegy and epitaph for the celebrated electrical eel, who could no longer rise to the occasion. A reissue of the sheets of the first edition of 1777 with a cancel title, of this elaborate addition to the corpus of salacious 1770s pamphlets devoted to the subject of the electrical eel, a topic of serious scientific enquiry and popular merriment. This one continues the phallic joke and manages to draw in the hapless Chevalier D’Eon (whose sex was then popularly debated) alongside the lecherous Earl of Harrington.

‘If the Gymnotus Electricus, lately exhibited to the Public, be really dead, it is to be hoped that we shall have no more of these witty indecencies’ (Monthly Review, Nov. 1777). ESTC: Harvard and Princeton only worldwide of this issue. ESTC gives the pagination [4], 29, [1], but both the 2 copies reported have only pp [2] before title, as here, though it is perhaps likely the work was issued with a half-title or initial blank not present in surviving copies.

First editions of two very scare annuals printed for Angelo Mariani, novelettes with a partially graphic narrative extolling the virtues of his wildly popular coca wine (Vin Mariani). Each copy here is number 38 of 50 copies on japon (of total editions of 500 copies). Mariani commissioned numerous bibliophilic productions from leading publishers and illustrators to promote his product. He had created his coca wine in 1863 and with an active content of around 6 milligrams per ounce it found enthusiastic drinkers all over the world, including Queen Victoria and Pope Leo XIII.

First edition. An elegant new year gift book, comprising an illustrated survey of the popular French rose varieties, notes on culture and cultivation and a collection of rose poetry, completed with a calendar for the year 1819. The finely engraved plates are after Pancrace Bessa, a pupil and collaborator of Henri Redouté, painting tutor to the duchesse de Berry, and from 1823, replacing Redouté as official painter at the Museum d’Histoire Naturelle. The book was reissued several times with added calendars for successive years. The varieties illustrated include: Grand cuisse de nymphe, Rose de Portland, Damas simple, Manteau d’Evêque and Rose Bichonne. Nissen 1266; Pritzel 6445.

First edition, rare, in its original gilt and glazed paper pictorial binding. Part of the Bibliothèque des Écoles Chrétiennes series, this copy from the celebrated collection of Colonel Milon (dispersed 1991). Cf. Tissandier 28 (second edition only). OCLC lists a single copy of any edition, the 1894 ‘nouvelle édition’ (Harvard).

First edition. A refutation of the possibility of heavier-than-air flight as proposed by Nadar and his colleagues.