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First edition. A rare little collection for animal-lovers, with over 60 anecdotes illustrating the characteristics of dogs (mainly) and cats, with titles such as ‘The faithful poodle’, ‘Siberian sledge-dogs’, ‘The surgeon and the dog’, ‘Strange punishment by a poodle’, ‘Remarkable rescue by a dog’, ‘The hunting dog’, ‘The life and times of a pomeranian’. For cat lovers, there are stories such as ‘The amusing education of a cat’ (from Campe’s Kinderbibliothek) and ‘The prisoner and the cat’. Worldcat locates copies at College of William & Mary (VA) and Staatsbibliothek only.

Second edition (first 1724) of Hoffmann’s “Complete Instruction for a safe, sensible and medically respected practice of medicine”: a very extensive baroque medical compendium.

Friedrich Hoffmann (1660-1742), a German physician, practised and taught medicine, chemistry and physics in Halle from 1693. He studied and wrote on such varied topics as paediatrics, mineral waters and meteorology and introduced many new drugs into medical practice (such as a compound spirit of ether branded “Anodyne” and “Hoffmanns-Tropfen” still today known as a household remedy). Hoffmann was among the first to describe several diseases, including appendicitis and German measles, and to recognize the regulatory role of the nervous system.

The work contains examinations of common ailments such as fever, infections, haemorrhaging, cramps, spasms and convulsions, consideration of the cerebral and nervous system, lymph and glands, female complaints and childhood illnesses. It also includes numerous medicinal recipes and cures. Not in Wellcome (the catalogue lists the first edition only); the NLM online catalogue lists the first edition of 1724 and another of 1743 only.

First editions. Tiphaigne de la Roche’s L’Amour Dévoilé is a notable attempt to explain love and sexual attraction in mechanistic terms. The author considers the role of ‘la matière Sympathique’, which he believed to be a type of vapour exhaled by both animals and humans, and its action upon the senses of a member of the opposite sex. This rational approach to the subject makes overt reference to Leeuwenhoek who had explained the action of skin pores and appears to prefigure modern research into pheromones.

The author studied medicine at the University of Caen and practised as a physician. L’Amour Dévoilé is his first published work preceding several speculative and utopian novels, notably Giphantie (1760, the title an anagram of his name) in which he anticipated several modern developments including photography and synthetic food.

Pernetti, author of the moral romance Histoire de Favoride was a canon of the cathedral at Lyon and a prominent antiquary of that city. He was also a freemason and wrote a short treatise on that subject. Gay I, 115 (L’Amour Dévoilé).

First edition. The Subterranean Voyage of Nicolas Klim is one of the classics of speculative and utopian fiction, written fifteen years after Swift's Gulliver's Travels and often compared favourably with that work. It is the first fully developed novel to be set in the earth's interior, a setting which has been utilised countless times in later science fiction. Klim, a poor student, falls through a hole in the earth just outside the Norwegian town of Bergen and finds himself on the inside of the earth's crust. He lands on the planet Nazar (which orbits a sun at the centre of the earth's cavity) where he finds a nation that lives according to the laws of reason and nature. The peasantry are considered very highly and therefore are the most distinguished class in the state; many of the highest offices are held by women, who are in every way equal to the men. Nazar presents an enlightened utopia, very much in the mould of the ideals of Montesquieu and Voltaire (who Holberg admired enormously) but Klim also travels to other states where the perfect state of society is not so fully developed or is perhaps degenerate, allowing a vivid comparison of political, social and philosophical systems.Holberg (like his hero Klim) was a native of Bergen at a time when Norway and Denmark existed as a twin kingdom. He saw himself as a fully European writer and the equal of the French philosophes. The majority of his works, including the present, first appeared in Latin, the universal language. The adventures of Nicolas Klim were immediately popular and were rapidly translated into all the major European languages.

First edition of one of Carus’s pioneering works in the emerging science of psychology. The author’s major contribution was in exploring the psychology of the unconscious and he is considered the precursor of Jung (who acknowleged his debt to Carus) in this field. The author was a prolific figure who wrote on many aspects of psychology, medicine and philosophy. He was an accomplished landscape artist in the Romantic tradition and had studied under Caspar David Friedrich. He was also a friend of Nietzsche, Humboldt and Goethe.

The Vorlesungen über Psychologie is especially notable for its wide frame of reference outside the discipline of medicine. Many of Carus’s examples are drawn from literature, with a special emphasis on the works of Shakespeare: in the course of his argument he refers variously to Hamlet, Macbeth, Henry IV, Romeo and Juliet and Othello. OCLC lists the National Library of Medicine copy only outside Europe.

First edition. Blake, 483; Waller 10136.

First edition. While Dionis’s consideration of the tape worm is fascinating enough (with its refutation of the theories of Nicolas Andry de Boisregard) the work is principally interesting for its larger part: Dionis’s edition of Sir Kenelm Digby’s account of the “Powder of Sympathy”, an alchemical preparation purported to cure wounds at a distance. Made from dried green vitriol, this was a variant of the well-known Paracelsian ‘weapon salve’ which cured wounds by being applied, not to the patient, but to the offending weapon. It is a measure of the endurance of belief in this cure that Dionis entered into a contemporary dispute concerning its use and provides a recipe for it. Pp. 65-266 here are occupied by Dionis’s introduction and by Digby’s text, first published in 1658. Wellcome II 471, Blake 121.

First edition in Latin (issued simultaneously in English) of this important work in the history of physiology. ‘In 1659 Charleton published a mechanistic account of physiology in Latin (Oeconomia animalis) and English (Natural History of Nutrition, Life, and Voluntary Motion), which included the suggestion that there was no increase in volume when a muscle contracted. Charleton was here rejecting the Cartesian account which attributed muscle shortening to its inflation by animal spirit. Charleton’s assessment was confirmed experimentally by Jonathan Goddard in 1669’ (Henry in Oxford DNB). Wellcome II, not in Krivatsy (nor NLM online catalogue, which list the Amsterdam second edition of 1659 and later London editions only); Russell, British Anatomy, 133; Wing C3685. OCLC locates US copies at Sutro Library (Ca), Northwestern and Bryn Athyn only.

First edition in French, bearing an obviously false ‘Londres’ imprint, of History of the Origin of Medicine (London, 1778). Lettsom, the physician and Quaker philanthropist was a prolific author on medical subjects and his name is especially associated with the foundation of the Medical Society of London (as a Quaker, he was excluded from the Royal College of Physicians). Wellcome III, 508; Blake 268; Rochedieu, p. 187.

First edition in French of Baker’s popular Reflections upon Learning (1699), a work designed to display the inadequacies of human knowledge and reason and to emphasise the ultimate need for belief in revelation. It proved controversial (provoking an angry response from geologist and physician John Woodward) and was widely reprinted in England. Bacon and Descartes, the twin pillars of scientific civilisation, raised on either side of the English Channel, are closely considered, though the spirit of scientific enquiry is frequently disparaged. The work of a conservative Anglican antiquary, its reception in France is perhaps surprising. The French translation was reprinted at Amsterdam the following year. Rochedieu, p. 15.

First edition of this Parisian physician’s first book, a treatise on the causes of flatulence. It was translated into French in an edition of 1754. Blake 96; Wellcome II, 376.

First edition. Though entitled “the first special report”, no further issues of the series were produced. The work includes an interesting collection of cases of named individuals (“William Ablett, aged 9, at play, ran a fork through the Cornea of the right eye, and punctured the Lens... James Greenow, 20 years of age, of Little Woolton, had the stalk of a tobacco pipe thrust through the Cornea” etc) and gives a peculiarly detailed insight into this aspect of public health in the Victorian industrial city. Neill was an enthusiastic advocate of the use of strychnine in opthalmology. This copy of the Special Report evidently belonged to one of his doctors, who made several small notes at the end of his part in a few of the treatments described in the text.

First edition of this famous work in urology, one of the earliest medical books to accept William Harvey’s account of the circulation of the blood. Beverwyck was a Dutch physician and a relative of Vesalius.

He sent a copy of this work to Harvey with a letter praising him for his work on circulation, saying “As everyone here wonderingly admires this doctrine, so I too embrace it both both arms in the little book which I send ‘On the calculus of the kidneys and the bladder’”. Harvey replied at length, praising the work with the punning passage: “Pleasing me, learned and elegant, and truly original, your De calculo renum et vesicae, in which you have laid a firm and solid foundation for your name and fame; go on to build further day by day, and erect a splendid monument of your genius. I will, not unwillingly, add my stone...” He went on to provide a detailed and approving critique of Beverwyk’s work on the operation of the kidneys. Keynes, The Life of William Harvey, pp. 271-73. Murphy, History of Urology, p. 78. Willems 463.

First edition in French of Siris, a Chain of philosophical Reflections and Enquiries concerning the Virtues of Tar-water (1744) and of Berkeley’s two letters on the subject to Thomas Prior.

‘In 1744 appeared one of [Berkeley’s] most controversial works. Siris is a reconciliation of medicine with metaphysics, best known for its advocacy of the medicinal value of tar water, a native American preventative distilled from pine resins. Having conducted his own experiments Berkeley made specific claims for its beneficial effect in alleviating fevers, gout, scurvy, and dropsy. In trying to understand the cosmical principles that might explain this he conceived the possibility, which others took up with greater alacrity, that its properties might be those of a universal panacea, operating as condensed light. Siris had exceptional sales, primarily as a home medicine guide, for a few years and was translated into most western European languages, but its medical claims also provoked criticism’ (Oxford DNB).

Siris is, however, more than just a medical work and the consideration of tar-water led Berkeley into a lengthy chain of reflections on the principles of the universe and of divine providence. Blake p. 43; Wellcome II, p. 149; Rochedieu p. 23.