Milestones of Science Books

MECKEL, Philipp Friedrich; MECKEL, Johann Friedrich the younger.

Journal für anatomische Varietäten, feinere und pathologische Anatomie. Erster Band, erstes Heft (all published).

Halle & Hanover: Gebrüder Hahn, 1805.

1st Edition. Soft cover. Very Good. Item #003819

8vo (211 x 129 mm). iv, 144 pp., 4 folding engraved plates bound at end. Original plain blue wrappers (dust-soiled at margins, chipped at corners). Text uncut and mostly unopened. Light browning and dust-soiling to outer margins; two to three broad short wormtracks to upper corner throughout but not affecting text. ----

RARE FIRST EDITION of this treatise of teratology and pathological anatomy. Philipp Friedrich Theodor Meckel (1755-1803) was a German anatomist, surgeon and obstetrician. He was born in Berlin, the son of Johann Friedrich Meckel, a professor of anatomy. Two of Philipp's sons also became anatomists, Johann Friedrich (1781-1833), a professor at the University of Halle, and August Albrecht (1790-1829), a professor in Bern. Philipp Friedrich Meckel studied medicine at the universities of Göttingen and Strasbourg, receiving his doctorate in 1777 with a dissertation on the labyrinth of the inner ear. Following graduation he took an extended study trip to Paris, London and Edinburgh. From 1779 he served as a professor of anatomy and surgery at the University of Halle, and in 1788 took on additional duties as head of the surgical unit at the hospital in Glaucha. On two separate occasions (1795, 1797) he was summoned as an obstetrician to St. Petersburg by the Russian royal family. At Halle an der Saale, he maintained and expanded upon an anatomical collection ("Meckelsche Sammlungen") that was initiated by his father. In the "Journal für anatomische Varietäten, feinere und pathologische Anatomie" (Journal of Anatomical Varieties, Finer and Pathological Anatomy) Philipp Friedrich's son J.F. Meckel the Younger published in 1805 texts and copper plates of his father to various preparations, engraved by A.G. Eberhard from Halle, the edition of which Ph. Meckel had planned himself, but personally could no longer carry out. The four treatises refer to the internal female reproductive organs, the urinary system, malformed newborns and aortic arches. The first treatise is an unchanged version of Ph. Meckel on a double uterus and double vagina, an everted urinary bladder, united kidneys, etc. His observations were based on two stillbirths. The second, third and fourth treatises are elaborations of his son Meckel the Younger, whereby he adhered to the found copper plates of his father (cf. Schwarz, p. 31-33). The first volume, first number of this journal apparently is all that was published, as we are unable to trace any further issues in literature and libraries.
References: S. Schwarz, Die anatomische Privatsammlung der Anatomenfamilie Meckel unter besonderer Berücksichtigung ihres präparationstechnischen Profils. Halle, Univ., Med. Fak., Diss., 1999, 135 pp.; not in Waller or Wellcome. - Visit our website to see more images!

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