The earliest medical photographic journal

MONTMEJA, Pierre Michel Arthur de; RENGADE, P. Jules; BOURNEVILLE, Désiré Magloire.

Revue photographique des hôpitaux de Paris. Bulletin Médical. .

Paris: Adrien Delahaye, 1869.

1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Item #002616

1869-1870. 2 volumes. 4to (250 x 176 mm). [6], 189 [3]; [4], 256 pp. Several woodcut illustrations in text and 67 (of 68, including 6 coloured) original albumen prints of photographs pasted on strong paper and a folding lithographic plate by Emile Beau. Lacking plate 1 in vol. I only. Pages untrimmed and partially unopened. Contemporary half cloth (extremities rubbed). A few pages of text browned and foxed, marginal dust and finger soiling in places, vol. I with spaper residue sticking on plate X, plate III and pp. 7-10 in vol. I loose, a few pages crudely opened. ----

RARE FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST TWO VOLUMES OF THE EARLIEST MEDICAL PHOTOGRAPHIC JOURNAL KNOWN. "Its stated aim was to bring together the 'most interesting cases' found in the hospitals of Paris and illustrate them with photography, a medium 'whose veracity', wrote Bourneville, 'is superior to all other genres of iconography.' The volumes of the journal are filled with photographs of medical monsters: men, women, and children suffering from extreme cases of myriad diseases." (A. Hustvedt, Medical Muses: Hysteria in Nineteenth-Century Paris, Norton & Co., 2011, p.162). The journal appeared from 1869 to 1876. Since the albumen print process does not allow good color reproduction, Montméja colored some of the images by hand from nature. The journal also contains several articles of the most respected masters of science, work on specialties in the micrograph and accessories sciences. It was also meant as an extension of an existing initiative in dermatology, Clinique photographique de l'hôpital de Paris founded in 1868 by Montméja and Hardy.

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