1825. Two volumes, 8vo; pp. xii, 302, [4]; pp. 260; with three folding engraved plates; both volumes somewhat foxed and browned throughout, with some occasional faint dampstaining; evidence of previous book-plates on both inside boards, and of ex-libris/book-seller notes on first front endpaper, now erased, with subsequent later price markings; bound in blue card boards over the original printed paper spine, boards seemingly near contemporary but with later endpapers, head and tail of spines chipped and worn with loss, spines a little faded, covers a little stained and soiled, and overall slightly dog-eared, but otherwise good. A scarce later edition of Scarpa’s famous surgical treatise on the diseases of the eye, first published in 1801 and considered the first textbook of ophthalmology in Italian. The work was to establish Scarpa’s reputation as a leading authority on the subject, and was to go through several editions and translations, notably into French in 1821, by Europe’s first Black physician, François Fournier-Pescay (1771-1833) and Louis Jacques Bégin (1793-1859). That translation included a number of additions by Fournier-Pescay and Bégin, which were clearly considered to be of sufficient importance and relevance that they have here been translated back into Italian, and published in this new edition.
‘It contains the first description of the operation of iridodialysis, and significant chapters on cataract, staphyloma and diseases of the vessels in the eye. Like most of Scarpa’s works... [it] is illustrated with the author’s own superbly executed drawings. “[Scarpa] himself trained the famous Faustino Anderloni to become the engraver of his illustrations... His anatomic prints are therefore models of anatomic representation as regards faithful differentation of the tissues, correctness of form, and the utmost perfection of engraving” (Choulant, p. 298)’ (Norman, 1899).
Fournier was the son of Adélaïde Rappau, a ‘mulâtress libre’ and the plantation owner François de Pescay of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti). By the time of his birth, they had returned to France and settled in Bordeaux, at the time a diverse city accustomed to biracial immigrants, mainly from the French West Indies. ‘Unlike in the colonies, there were few laws impeding upward mobility of “persons of color” (les personnes des couleur), thus Fournier benefited from an excellent education in Paris followed by medical training in Bordeaux. Swept up in the upheaval of the French Revolution, twenty-one-year-old Fournier, along with his brothers Jacques Philippe and Louis Georges, joined the army in 1792. During his service as an army surgeon (chirugien aide-major), he demonstrated extraordinary scientific ability by becoming the first Frenchman to duplicate Englishman Adair Crawford’s experiments with barium chloride in the treatment of tuberculosis which he later published. He left the military in 1799 to practice medicine in Brussels, Belgium, where he co-founded the city’s medical society, Société de Médecine de Bruxelles, and served as its first secretary-general, recording volumes of proceedings. In 1803 he founded the arts and sciences journal Le nouvel spirit des journaux and later published an eighty-six-page treatise on tetanus which was lauded by the Medical Society of Paris. Moving from Brussels to Strasbourg, France, he became professeur-directeur at the École Spéciale de Médecine de Strasbourg.’(Robert Fikes on https://blackpast.org). He was to return to Haiti in 1823 and under the regime of Jean-Pierre Boyer, Fournier was appointed Inspector General of the Health Department and Director of Haiti’s first university (L'Académie d'Haïti). ‘It is simply a fact that no other physician of African descent was able to accomplish as much during the 18th and 19th centuries, or probably any time prior to the onset of the Industrial Revolution.’ (Fikes, p. 683).
Previous editions contained four plates, but only three have been included here.