One of the most important works in the history of medicine

MORGAGNI, Giovanni Battista.

De sedibus, et causis morborum per anatomen indagatis libri quinque.

Venice: ex typographia Remondiniana, 1761.

1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Item #001964

Folio (374x233 mm). xcvi, 298, [2]; 452 pp., including half-title, engraved portrait frontispiece in volume one, titles with engraved vignettes. Contemporary calf (sides worn, hinges repaired), internally with faint dampstains in margin, internally with only very little browning and some occasional faint spotting; lower corner of D3 and D4 torn not affecting text, few ink marks to fore-edge, page numbers added in hand on index page xvii. Provenance: Thomas Dale (1729-1816), American physician who received his M.D. degree in 1775 from the RoyalCollege of Physicians in Edinburgh (ownership inscription "Tho. Dale M.D. 1775" on first title); also inscription of unidentified person on first fly leaf. Good, clean and wide-margined copy of the rare 2nd issue of the first edition. ----

PMM 206; Dibner 125; Norman 1547; Grolier Medicine 46; Heirs of Hippocrates 792; Wellcome IV, 178; Garrison-M. 2276; NLM/Blake 312; Osler 1178; Waller 6672 - First edition, second issue (with the title printed in black only), of Morgagni's main work and ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT WORKS IN THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE. "Morgagni was the true founder of modern pathological anatomy" (Garrison-Morton). Morgagni, Professor of Anatomy at Padua, used evidence from his experience and records of some 700 post-mortem dissections, to establish a procedure of basing diagnosis and treatment on a detailed knowledge of the anatomical conditions of common diseases, i.e. a classification of symptoms rather than diseases. The work includes a number of descriptions of new diseases, many of which have remained classics until recent times.

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