1774. 12mo, pp. [iv], hand-coloured coat of arms, and title, 592; with four further attractive hand-coloured ‘coats of arms’ adorning sectional titles at pp. 233, 245, 263, & 413; penned in a neat legible single hand in brown ink; some occasional minor spotting and soiling, but otherwise clean and bright; in contemporary full marbled calf, spine in compartments with raised bands, attractively tooled in gilt, with red morocco label lettered in gilt (slightly chipped), all edges gilt, head of spine chipped and worn exposing headband, joints a little rubbed, some minor surface wear, extremities rubbed, corners somewhat worn and bumped; with the engraved book-plate of the Lille pharmacist Edmond Leclair on front paste-down; an appealing survivor. An attractive and beautifully penned late eighteenth century manuscript transcribing an early, perhaps indeed the inaugural, surgical course given by Philippe Joseph Arnould (1740-1790) at the Royal College of Surgery in Lille in 1774. The course notes have been neatly compiled by Jean-Baptiste-Ignace Joseph Quittez, son of the Lille Master Surgeon François-Joseph Quittez, and who has signed his initials on the final leaf. He was himself to become a master surgeon and Professor of Osteology at the Lille school.
This attractive manuscript is divided into five parts: ‘De la physiologie’ (pp. 1-231); ‘Hygiène’ (pp. 233-243); ‘Pathologie’ (pp. 245-262); ‘Thérapeutique’ (pp. 263-412); ‘Des maladies en particulier’ (pp. 213-586); and concluding with a detailed index (pp. 587-592).
By a declaration of June 1772, Louis XV transformed the guild of surgeons of Lille into a college and ordered the establishment of a school of surgery, which opened in May 1773. Thus we find an attractive hand-coloured rendition of the Arms of the House of France at the start of the volume, below which are penned the words "By order of the King. 1774." The second, third, fourth, and final sections are each further attractively adorned with painted coats of arms: royal arms (p. 233); arms of Lille (p. 245); royal arms supported by two angels (p. 263); and arms of the surgeons supported by two angels (p. 413). As such the present manuscript provides an invaluable insight into the curriculum of the day at the newly established Royal College
Provenance: The manuscript was once in the possession of the the pharmacist and medical historian Edmond Leclair, who cites it in his ‘Histoire de la chirurgie à Lille’, vol. II, p. 302 giving the following note about Arnould (here in translation):
‘Born in Lille on August 23, 1740, admitted as a surgeon on January 31, 1765, married Geneviève Jesupret, a native of Saint-Amand, in Lille (La Madeleine) on October 12, 1773. A consulting surgeon at the Comtesse Hospital and the Saint-Sauveur Hospital, he was Master of the Corps from 1768 to 1770, Assistant Professor in 1773, and Full Professor in 1775. He appears as "absent" on the lists of 1792. Our collection includes the lectures dictated by Arnould to his students in 1774 and 1775, which were compiled by his student J. B. J. J. Quittez’.