Leiden: Johann Maire, 1639.

Price: $45,000.00

Quarto: 3 books in 1 vol. 19.2 x 14.4 cm. I. Harvey: [iv], 267, [i]; 84, [iv] pp., with 2 engraved plates on two inserted leaves. Collation: (?)2, π2 (the plates), A-Z4, Aa-Kk4, Ll2; (a)-k4, l2, π2 (Ad Lectorem). II. Aselli: [viii], 104, [8] pp., with 4 engraved plates on 4 inserted leaves. Collation: )?(4, π4 (plates with letterpress on versos), A-O4. III. Beckher: (xvi), 170, (vi) pp. Collation: *4, **4, A-Y4.

THIRD EDITION (the SECOND COMPLETE EDITION OF HARVEY’S MASTERPIECE.)

Bound in contemporary Dutch vellum (vellum soiled, with scuffs and slight warping to the binding). Contents in very good condition, title of Harvey lightly soiled, small rust hole in first engraving, some light damp-staining to the latter part of the Harvey and the first part of the Aselli. There are several ink and blind-stamps (Library of the College of Surgeons of Ireland) on the title and in the text. With the 17th c. inscription of Hendrik Lubaeus of Bergen op Zoom, Brabant: “Henricus Lubaeus Bergoz. Possessor. Anno 1644 12/17 Groningae”. Lubaeus authored a “Disputatio medica” in 1641, the second half of which concerns the human pulse.

Lubaeus’ inscription (in Greek) shows that he gave this volume book a gift to a certain “Nicholas”. Lubaeus’ initials appear at foot of the Harvey and Beckher title pages (dated 7 November 1644). The title to the Aselli is also initialed by him, dated 1641. Textual annotations (almost certainly by Lubaeus) appear in the margins of the Harvey and the Aselli.

The second complete edition of William Harvey's revolutionary work in which he accurately described the circulation of blood and the heart's function as a pump. "What Vesalius was to anatomy, Harvey was to physiology; the whole scientific outlook on the human body was transformed, and behind almost every important medical advance in modern times lies the work of Harvey." (Heirs of Hippocrates)

When first published in 1628, Harvey’s “De Motu Cordis” generated significant opposition by Galenic practitioners. This edition includes two attacks on Harvey (with Harvey’s responses) by Emilio Parisano (1635) and James Primrose (1630). Harvey’s text is printed together with Parisano’s critique, passage-by-passage; the criticisms and refutations of Primrose constitute a separate, second part of the volume. This copy includes the separately-printed 3rd edition of Gaspare Aselli’s “De Lactibus, sive Lacteis Venis” (1640), also printed by Maire, announced in the publisher's note to the reader and sometimes, as here, bound with the Harvey (see Keynes, 3rd ed., No. 3, p.37, note). The volume concludes with Daniel Beckher’s “Medicus microcosmus”(Leiden, Maire, 1641) (see below).

“Harvey proved experimentally that the blood's motion is continuous and always in one direction, and that its actual amount and velocity makes it a physical impossibility for it to do otherwise than return to the heart by the venous route, the heart being itself a muscle and acting as a pump. He showed how the whole of the blood passes through the lungs, is returned to the left side of the heart, then passes through the general circulation and returns to the right side; he even suspected the existence of the capillaries connecting the smallest arteries with the smallest veins, but without the microscope he could not see them. . . . The arguments and demonstrations marshaled by Harvey were too cogent to admit of long resistance, and his work was accepted by medical men in his lifetime." (PMM).

Before Harvey, medicine taught that veins carried nutritive blood outward from the liver to nourish the body, while the heart and arteries belonged to a separate system conveying vital spirit and heat; yet after Realdo Colombo’s 1559 account of pulmonary circulation, some anatomists began to reconsider the heart as primarily a blood-transmitting organ. By 1616, Harvey advanced this shift through extensive vivisections—especially of dying animals whose slowed heartbeat made its motions clearer—showing that the heartbeat consists of an active contraction followed by passive relaxation, that the arterial pulse is caused by blood expelled from the heart rather than by any intrinsic arterial movement, and that the heart’s essential function is to contract and expel blood, transmitting its mechanical impulse to the entire arterial system at once, like the inflation of a glove. His crucial insight was that the heart must transmit a large amount of blood at each beat. (adapted from DSB)

“In the first half of ‘De motu cordis’ Harvey presented his conclusions about the movements of the heart and arteries in a more developed form. He describes how he first took up the study of the movement of the heart, presents his conclusions about the ventricles, arteries, and auricles, emphasizes the idea that the overall action of the heart is the constant transmission of blood from the vena cava to the aorta, and defends the pulmonary circuit of the blood.

“Harvey relates how he went beyond this early work on the heart and arteries to the discovery of the circulation. From this account it seems clear that he first conceived of the centripetal flow of venous blood as a necessary consequence of his conclusions about the heartbeat, rather than as the result of a direct investigation of the veins. He realized that over a relatively short period of time the heart transmits from the veins to the arteries even more than the whole mass of the blood; the rate of transmission is in fact so large that if it took place in only one direction, the veins would soon be drained and the arteries filled to bursting.” (DSB)

2. ASELLI, Gaspare (1581-1626)

De Lactibus, sive Lacteis Venis, quarto vasorum mesaraicorum genere, novo invento ... .

Leiden: Johann Maire, 1640

THIRD EDITION (1st ed. 1627)

Gaspare Aselli was a distinguished Milanese physician who anticipated Harvey’s “De Motu Cordis” with his discovery of lacteal vessels (the lymphatic vessels of the small intestine which absorb digested fats) and their connection to the circulatory system. In “De Lactibus sive Lacteis Venis” he wrote “Perhaps it would not be absurd to suppose that the blood brought to the lung by the pulmonary artery, mingled with the air attenuated by the lung and returned to the left ventricle through the pulmonary vein”. (see below)

“Aselli, while he was doing an autopsy on a dog on July 23, 1622, to show some friends the recurrent laryngeal nerves, also wished to observe the movements of the diaphragm. Opening the abdomen and holding back the stomach and intestines, of a sudden he noticed whitish cords spread over all the mesentery and intestine in numerous branches. . . . Turning to his colleagues, he cried out: “Eureka!”

“He described the valvules at the point of departure of the intestinal vessels and the course of the lymphatics, and, before the publication of Harvey’s book, wrote these remarkable words about the circulation: “Perhaps it would not be absurd to suppose that the blood brought to the lung by the vena arteriosa (pulmonary artery), mingled with the air attenuated by the lung and returned to the left ventricle through the arteria venosa (pulmonary vein). Perhaps it is not necessary to imagine the passages that Galen supposed to exist in the interventricular septum, which could not have any use.” (Arturo Castiglione, “A History of Medicine” p.521)

“His ‘De Lactibus sive Lacteis Venis’ concluded that these vessels carried chyle, defined as digested food. He described these vessels as terminating at the liver (the seat of blood-making), and his numerous plates appear to show this. Like Harvey, Aselli built his argument on a series of dissections and vivisections.

“The lacteals, and the supposed site of sanguification in the liver, thus provided a kind of test case for the theory of circulation, and by the early 1640s Aselli’s and Harvey’s works often appeared in print together. But Aselli’s emphasis on structure masked his vagueness about function; in contrast, Harvey began with function, and used anatomical techniques to support a functional argument.” (Anita Guerrini, “Experiments, Causation, and the Uses of Vivisection in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century”)

3. Beckher, Daniel (1594-1653)

Medicus microcosmus seu spagyria microcosmi.

Leiden: Jacob Maire, 1633

SECOND EDITION, ENLARGED (1st 1622).

Beckher was professor of medicine at the University of Königsberg from 1623. He was a proponent of spagyric medicine, a branch of alchemy conceived by Paracelsus and dedicated to the production of medicines using alchemical procedures. In this work, he describes remedies “to be learnedly extracted from the body of man, both living and dead . . . with an Index containing medicines for curing diseases derived from the human body.” (title page)

From antiquity, bodily secretions and other products (urine, blood, feces, ear wax) and body parts (hair, earwax, teeth) had been used in medicine.

“In this work the author prescribes the medicinal use of the following products of the human body, taken from people both alive and dead: burned hair is used for epilepsy, suffocation of the uterus (“hysteria” i.e. post-partum depression), apoplexy, and hemorrhage. Saliva (of a fasting person) is used as an antidote for the venom of snakes, scorpions, spiders, rabid dogs and human bites, as well as for treating venereal disease. Breast milk is used in the treatment of tuberculosis, dysentery, depression (melancholy), paroxysm of fevers, epilepsy, eye diseases, uterine problems, and hemorrhoid pain. Menstrual blood is effective in treating gout, leprosy, cholera, and epilepsy. Ingesting the placenta and umbilical cord relieves postpartum pain, epilepsy, depression, colic, and (in powder form) works as a labor accelerator. Urine is used in the treatment of worms, male impotence, scabies, gout, plague, venereal diseases, cancer, ulcerations, irregular menstruation, and gangrene.

“Beckher also describes the therapeutic use of feces, semen, blood, kidney stones and (from corpses), skin, fat, the brain; also bearded lichens (usnea) found growing on skulls, bones, and teeth; as well as ‘mummy powder’.”(translated and adapted from: Argus Vasconcelos de Almeida, Aspectos Históricos do Uso Terapêutico de Produtos e Excreções Humanas, p. 14-15)

Keynes “A Bibliography of the Writings of Dr. William Harvey, 1578-1657” 3; Krivatsy 5329 (Harvey) and 447 (Aselli); Wellcome 3070 (Harvey) and 506 (Aselli); Heirs of Hippocrates 256 (Harvey only); Heirs of Hippocrates 417; Parkinson and Lumb 1147; Waller 4089. For Beckher, Krivatsky 1011.

These references are to the first edition: PMM 127 (first edition); Garrison & Morton 759 “the most important book in the history of medicine” (of the 1st); Grolier Medicine 27 (1st ed.); Norman 1006 (1st ed.)