1844. I. Fours volumes, 4to; I. pp. xv,[i] blank, 177, [1] blank, [2] errata and blank, without frontispiece and portrait of Paolo Mascagni, with 2 coloured lithograph plates ‘Notions Preliminaries’ depicting the male and female form, and 44 coloured lithograph plates, each retaining tissue guard (though some quite torn); title-page with section excised at centre with tissue repair on verso, volume with prominent dampstain at tail with some heavy foxing; II. pp. iv, 191, [1] errata, with frontispiece portrait of William Harvey, and 44 hand-coloured lithograph plates numbered 45-89 (all retaining tissue guards), plates 45 and 46 folding; with some occasional staining and soiling throughout; III. pp. [iv], 182, [1] errata, ‘System de Lavater’ [184] - 206; with portrait of Lavater (at p. 184) and 50 hand-coloured lithograph plates, numbered 91-131 (missing plates 90 (folding plate of skeleton) and 94 (image of skull)), and nos 1 - 10 relating to the System of Lavater (all retaining original tissue guards); with prominent dampstaining affecting upper and lower margins almost continuously, and further foxing and soiling; IV. pp. [iv], 196, with hand-coloured frontispiece portrait of Gall, and 45 hand-coloured lithograph plates, numbered 132 - 136, plate 132 folding (missing final plate 177 of the Siamese twins), with prominent dampstaining to upper and lower margins throughout and some further soiling; in all three portraits and 185 engraved plates, all hand-coloured; with the library stamp of the ‘Bibliothèque Médicale Hôpital Notre-Dame’ on each title-page and often first leaf and sporadically throughout, with book-plate on each front paste-down; in contemporary black morocco backed marbled boards, spines lettered and tooled in gilt, inner hinges strengthened, wear with loss at head and tail of spines of Vols I and II, with further wear and rubbing to all joints and extremities, old accession numbers penned in white ink at tail; a working copy only. II. Four volumes bound in two, 4to; I. pp. xv,[i] blank, 177, [1] blank, [2] errata and blank, with lithograph frontispiece, portrait of Paolo Mascagni, 2 lithograph plates ‘Notions Preliminaries’ depicting the male and female form, and 44 lithograph plates; II. pp. iv, 191, [1] errata, with frontispiece portrait of William Harvey, and 44 lithograph plates numbered 45-89 (45 and 46 folding); with some occasional staining and soiling throughout; III. pp. [iv], 182, [1] errata, ‘System de Lavater’ [184] - 206; with portrait of Lavater (at p. 184) and 52 lithograph plates, numbered 90-131 (90, 101, 113 folding), and nos 1 - 10 relating to the System of Lavater; IV. pp. [ii] blank, [iv], 196, with portrait of Gall at p. 153 ‘Système de Gall’, and 46 lithograph plates, numbered 132 - 177, (plate 132 folding); in all 193 lithographs (one frontispiece, four portraits and 188 plates); all four volumes somewhat browned and foxed due to paper quality, more prominent in places and foxing sometimes affecting plates, with occasional marginal dampstaining; contemporary bookseller’s label on both front pastedowns; in contemporary black calf-backed marbled boards, spines ruled, lettered and numbered in gilt, head of both spines chipped and worn with loss, with slight loss at tail, joints lightly rubbed, extremities worn, with lower rear corner of volume two torn and missing. We are pleased to offer an unusual opportunity to acquire for comparative study, a copy of the rare first edition, though sadly incomplete (perhaps unsurprisingly), of a stunning and copiously illustrated introduction to the ‘body of man’, together with a complete uncoloured copy of the equally scarce second edition (idential to that of the first). The first edition presented here contains 188 of the 193 striking lithographs, almost all of which however, are coloured, seemingly by hand and mechanically, with several enhanced with gum arabic. The second edition is complete, and though uncoloured, is no less visually striking. Though the title page calls for 200 ‘planches’, it collates exactly to that of the first edition, and there are in all 193 plates (interleaved within the text) numbered 1-177, together with an additional section of 10 plates illustrating Gall and Lavater’s system. There are portraits of Paolo Mascagni, William Harvey, Franz Joseph Gall and Johann Casper Lavater, with two further unnumbered plates illustrating the male and female form, and the opening frontispiece.
Dr Jules Galet was a clinical head at the Montpellier Faculty of Medicine, and published the present popular work on anatomy and physiology in parts (each ‘livraision’ 24 pages and six plates) between 1835-1841, through which he hoped to make the place the subject ‘within the reach of all classes of society’. The volumes deal in turn with I. the Digestive, absorbent and respiratory apparatus, digestive function, absorption and breathing; II. Respiratory system and blood circulation; III. the musculoskeletal system (osteology, arthrology and myology), locomotion and the mechanism of voluntary movements; Lavater’s system; and IV. the nervous system, generation, innervation, Gall’s system, and embryology.
Contemporary reviews of the work reveal that it was possible to buy copies either uncoloured (75c) or coloured (1 fr 75c), though coloured copies, are particularly scarce. As Monique Kornell notes in her work Flesh and Bones, the Art of Anatomy (p. 198), the majority of the illustrations were in fact drawn from a variety of sources, such as Antonio Scarpa’s 1794 Tabulae neurologicae, although Galet has signed them all as being designed and lithographed by himself, each signed ‘Galet, D.M. pinx et lith’, and which were then printed by the famous Parisian lithography firm of Lemercier, being signed ‘Lith de Lemercier’, with the later volumes including a number signed ‘Imp de Lemercier, Benard et Cie’. Joseph Rose Lemercer (1803-1887) was an early adapter of lithography after it arrived in France, and went on to establish one of the most famous printing firms in France. He formed a partnership with Jean Benard in arround 1829 which lasted for about 10 years.
The first edition on offer does not include the allegorical frontispiece, the portrait of Paolo Mascagni, the striking folding plate of the skeleton (white printed on a black background), that of the skull (similarly white on black), and the final plate teratological plate. These are provided in photocopy.
A further edition was published in 1854, and it was translated into Spanish by Dr. José Trullas y Gea and Dr. Mariano Garcia Huerta.
OCLC locates copies of the first edition at the National Library of Medicine, Washington, the British Library and Cambridge University, with a small number of European locations, with copies of the second edition at the New York Academy of Medicine and Chicago (both citing the title-page number of plates), and the Getty (noting 192, seemingly missing a portrait).