Milestones of Science Books

PLATTER, Felix (PLATER).

Praxeos seu de cognoscendis, praedicendis, praecavendis, curandisque affectibus homini incommodantibus tractatus.

Basel: Conrad Waldkirch, 1603.

1st Edition. Soft cover. Very Good. Item #003342

Two volumes, 8vo (177 x 104 mm). [16], 679, [25]; [16], 972, [20] pp. Woodcut initials, head- and tailpieces. Uniformly bound in contemporary limp vellum with yapp edges, spines hand-lettered (leather ties mostly gone, slight wear to extremities, vellum soiled and spotted). Text unevenly browned throughout (most gatherings of first volume stronger due to paper quality), occasional spotting and minor marginal dampstaining, vol. 2 with small wormtrack to upper margin of final gathering affecting a few letters of headline and index. Provenance: Libraire Alain Brieux (inventory label loosely inserted); French collector Nicolas Jouravleff. All in all a very good unsophisticated set in untouched bindings. ----

Norman 1715; Garrison-Morton 2195; NLM/Krivatsy 9076, 9077; Wellcome 5086, 5087; DSB XI, p.33. FIRST EDITION OF VOL. 2 (1603), SECOND EDITION OF VOL. 1 (second issue, with the title-page dated 1609). "AN OUTSTANDING WORK ON PATHOLOGY" (DSB). Platter, a celebrated Swiss anatomist, pediatrician, and chief physician of Basle, proposed a novel classification of diseases according to their symptoms, including, for the first time, mental diseases. Platter "performed over 300 dissections, making numerous significant pathological observations, including sublingual calculi, giantism, intestinal parasites, and cystic liver and kidneys associated with terminal anasarca. Platter also made the first attempt to classify mental diseases, grouping them under mental weakness (caused by heredity, trauma or physical illness), mental consternation (listlessness, stupor, paralysis, agitation or catalepsy), deep sleep (comatose or torpid states) and mental alienation. He gave one of the earliest accurate clinical descriptions of cretinism, at that time commonly found in the Swiss mountains." (Norman). - Visit our website to see more images!

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