Milestones of Science Books

VESLING, Johann.

Syntagma anatomicum. Locis plurimis auctum, emendatum, novisque iconibus diligenter exornatum.

Padua: P. Frambotti, 1647.

2nd Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Item #002270

4to (250 x 195 mm). [16], 274, [14] pp, including additional engraved title page depicting the anatomical theater at Padua, and 24 engraved copperplates (one outside pagination), bound without the engraved portrait of the author found in a few copies. Contemporary half tanned leather (extremities worn, corners of boards heavily scuffed), paper shelf label to spine. Internally only very little browned, faded dampstain to gutter of a few leaves. Extensive ink marginalia in a neat early hand throughout. Provenance: D.G.Seidel (signature on title-page); Library of the Count of Solms-Wildenfels (armorial bookplate inscribed "Comes de Solms" to front pastedown). A fine, crisp copy internally. ----

NLM/Krivatsy 12328; Waller 9931; Osler 4166; Choulant-Frank p.243; Roberts & Tomlinson, p.236-239. FIRST ILLUSTRATED EDITION (after the octavo first edition of 1641) with plates by Giovanni Georgi. Remarkably, the first edition was not illustrated, reflecting the reality that it was still possible to sell books on anatomy at this time without reference to images. Notably, the copperplates in this first illustrated edition bear little or no relationship to the powerfully influential woodcuts of Vesalius' Fabrica. In spite of its aesthetic limitations, Vesling's book found a ready market, and was reissued numerous times and translated into the main European languages including English. The plates were "intended for the commonest needs but are mostly original engravings and represent some organs of the human body more correctly than their predecessors. They were very popular at the time of their appearance and have been frequently re-engraved" (Choulant-Frank, p.243).
This true first edition is scarcer than previously assumed, as most copies belong to a generally unsuspected counterfeit edition printed by the atlas publisher Johannes Janssonius of Amersterdam (F. Oyens, Jan Janssen as counterfeiter and pirate, Quaerendo vol. IX, 1979, p.351). The counterfeit edition can be identified by the absence of the publisher's privilege text on leaf **4 verso.
In December 1632, Johann Wesling (1598-1649) was appointed professor of anatomy and surgery at Padua University. In 1638, he was appointed to the chair of botany, and left the chair of surgery but retained the chair of anatomy. Wesling was born in Minden, Westphalia. His Catholic family had probably left Vienna to escape religious persecution. (A. Porzionato et al., The Anatomical School of Padua. The Anatomical Record, Vol. 295, no. 6, 2012, p.908).

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