[ca. 1840-45]. Single sheet, 23 cm x 13 cm, printed on silk on one side; some very minor fraying to edges, and very slightly darkened, but otherwise in fine condition. A celebrated pianist, composer and inventor, Henri Herz (1803-1888), Austrian by birth but French by nationality and domicile, travelled world-wide, including tours in Europe, Russia, Mexico, South America, and the United States. In 1839 he founded his own piano factory where he made many important developments in piano design.
This luxuriously produced announcement, printed on silk, seems to be for a performance by some sort of mechanical musical instrument, using cylinders which were "changed through the medium of the patent dials." According to the flier, the two cylinders were capable of performing "8 operatic airs," and "5 quadrilles and 3 waltzes." We have so far been able to identify the machine in question, although Herz made improvements, and patented designs for various sostenente (or sostinente) pianos - the name given to keyboard instruments on which the duration of sounds is artificially lengthened by methods such as compressed air, the quick striking of hammers, free sounding reeds, or by other clockwork or mechanical devices. The first known example was invented by Henry Robert Mott of Brighton in 1817. Herz worked upon sostenente piano mechanisms using both compressed air (obtained by means of bellows moved by pedals or a motor and which is directed upon already vibrating strings in order to prolong the vibration), notably his ‘pianoeolique’, as well as a ‘melopiano’, a method of sustaining tones through the repeated and quick striking of hammers. Fast rotating cylinders were one way of achieving this.
This appealing silk promotional flier has been printed by the artist and engraver George Phillips Johnson (1807?-1848).

1922. 8vo, pp. 56; copiously illustrated throughout; printed in brown on cream paper, text within ruled border; some light foxing, with a few neat pencil corrections to prices; stapled as issued, in the original cream printed wrappers, retaining the original hanging cord at top of spine, staples somewhat rusted, which has stained the wrappers, with some light staining along upper fore edge, some light edge wear; a most attractive copy. A most evocative and striking trade catalogue, issued by the London firm of Silk’s Toilet Company, copiously illustrated and advertising a myriad of beautifying tonics, lotions, potions, powders, perfumes and colognes for both men and women. Amongst the must-have items we find ‘Silkodono... the latest scientific discovery for producing, preserving, restoring, and beautifying the hair and for keeping the scalp healthy and free from dandruff, scurf and scalp irritation’. Also for sale are manicure kits, nail polishers, powder puffs, hair nets, hair combs, and several pages devoted to wigs and wig-making, with ‘finest French hair’ available, as well as ‘beautiful French transformations’ - striking wigs and postiches for women.
We have been unable to find any information about the company, other than what is revealed by this wonderful brochure, in that they were manufacturing perfumers based at Red Lion Street, High Holborn, London.

1882. Attractive oval softwood box, with attractive printed label on lid, box containing ca. 100 small multicoloured coated discs threaded onto small wax wicks, with some spare wax; aside from some slight staining label and underside of box, and small nick in lid a fine example. No doubt an extremely scarce ephemeral survivor. This appealing box, seemingly an almost full compliment, contains a number of small night lights, manufactured by the Nuremberg firm of Joh. Leonh. Backofen. The small and extremely decorative paper discs, have been coated, and possibly scented, and are each threaded onto a small strip of wax, and would be lit to provide comfort, and possibly to fill the air with soothing fragrances, to help sleep.
Johann Leonhard Backofen is listed in the 1870 Nürnberg-Fürther Industrie-Almanach as a nightlight manufacturer, with the 1905 Zeitscrift für angewandte Chemie referring to ‘Saturn für Nachtlichte’ made by Backofen.

1953. 4to, pp. 34; with a number of 11 text figures and 16 tables; lightly browned; stapled as issued in the original printed wrappers, evidence of previous label on lower rear cover. A later paper by the noted Russian born geologist and chemist, Taisia Maximova Stadnichenko (1894-1958), considered one of the foremost geochemists in her field, and whose work focused on the distribution of germanium and the minor-element content in coal. Born in Taganash in the Crimea, she attended Petrograd University before joining the Russian Geological Survey as a chemist, and was part of a surveying expedition to the Island of Sakahalin in 1917. During WWI she moved to the US as an interpreter for the Russian Mission, and remained as a representative to the Washington Disarmament Peace Conference after the war. After the war, she continued her professional life as a researcher at the University of Illinois and as a professor at Vassar College from 1922 to 1935. In 1935, Stadnichenko led the first U.S Geological Survey exploring the minor-element distribution within coal by collecting samples of coal ash for element content analysis, which found germanium and other elements within the coal ash. Stadnichenko is widely considered instrumental in the discovery and understanding of coal's structure and origin.

1897. Together, two works in one volume, 8vo; pp. 96, with engraved frontispiece, engraved title-page and five full-page engravings, with head- and tail-pieces; 93, [3] publisher’s advertisements, with engraved frontispiece, and one full-page engraving, with head-pieces; some occasional light browning and marginal dust-soiling; in contemporary blue decorative publisher’s cloth, lettered in gilt, decorated in blind, head and tail of spine a little bumped and rubbed, corners and extremities slightly bumped; presentation inscription on front free endpaper ‘Beatrice L Smith, Woodgrove, Sunday School Prize, 6th April 1902’; an appealing copy. An appealing copy of the later editions (first 1886 and 1888) of two popular works for children by the best-selling Scottish romantic novelist, journalist and suffragist, and a founding member of the Scottish National Party Annie S Swan (1859-1943). Swan ‘ was educated at Queen Street Ladies College, Edinburgh, but passed much of her youth in the country while her father spent business profits on unsuccessful farms. In 1883... [she] published her first novel, Aldersyde, admired by Gladstone for its ‘truly living sketches of Scotch character’. It was followed by a stream of serial fiction: more than 250 novels adn tales. She also edited the journal The Woman at Home from 1893. Her ‘serious and innocuous fiction for the delectation of babes’, as she dubbed it in her straightforward adn readable autobiography, My Life, 1934, was enormously popular in its day, and still reprinted up to the 1950s’ (Feminist Companion of Literature, p. 1049-50). She also wrote under the pen name of David Lyall. ‘One of the most commercially successful popular novelists of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries’

1876. 8vo, pp. [ii] half title, [3]-16; lightly browned throughout; stitched as issued in the original green printed wrappers, with paper accession label at head of upper wrapper, spine split and covers detached, rear cover with loss at tail, and a marginal tear, upper wrapper with marginal nicks, covers a little stained. Uncommon first edition of this pamphlet, one of a number of essays published by the noted British ophthalmic surgeon, Charles Taylor M.D. FRCSE (1829-1909), who worked at the Nottingham and Midland Eye Infirmary. “A consummate and imperturbable operator, especially in cases of cataract, he enjoyed a practice that extended beyond Great Britain” (DNB). He was also known as a campaigner against the Contagious Diseases Act and vivisection.
In all Taylor seems to have published five lectures, all of which were available for purchase for one shilling, although all of which are now scarce. A compilation of his lectures was published in 1888 as ‘Lectures on diseases of the Eye’.

1883. 8vo, pp. 47, [1] blank, [2] publisher’s advertisement and blank, including 10 full page plates (some partially coloured in red); some occasional light foxing and marginal browning, with neat repair to gutter of p. 33; with contemporary newspaper review pasted on to front paste down, and contemporary manuscript note giving an ‘epitome of a paper given by Teale’; in the original burnt sienna publisher’s cloth, neatly recased, upper cover ruled and decorated in black, head and tail of spine a little rubbed, spine and upper cover somewhat soiled and darkened, a good copy. First edition of this instructive work by the noted surgeon to the General Infirmary at Leeds, and renowned domestic sanitarian Thomas Pridgin Teale, junior (1831 - 1923). According to the preface, Economy of Coal is an expansion of ‘a lecture delivered on November 22nd, 1882, before the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society’ and was published ‘in the hope that it may contribute to the diminution of soot and smoke throughout the Kingdom, and so further one great aim of the sanitary reformers, the improvement of the atmosphere of towns; that it may effect a large reduction in the amount of cinders and ashes, and so lessen municipal rates; that it may enhance the comfort of the sick room by rendering a fire more free from noise and dust and more lasting; and that it may induce many persons, including the delicate, the invalid, and the hard worked family doctor, to look upon a fire in the bedroom, not as a superfluous extravagance, but as a much needed comfort, nay, as a profitable investment towards the maintenance of health’ (Preface).
Teale describes his new device for controlling the draft of a fireplace from below, the “Economiser” in full, showing how effective it is in contrast to ordinary fireplaces, which he illustrates with graphic captions. It soon became standard and was known as the “Teale Grate”, and was ‘the result of several years' experience and of a number of experiments to determine the best means of obtaining an open fireplace with slow combustion and a maximum of heating power. It abolished the old iron grate, placed high up in the fireplace, with black bars for winter and polished steel bars for summer use. The idea, however, was not wholly new, as Teale discovered to his great delight one day when, visiting Hatfield House, he found the principles he advocated were embodied there in grates of the sixteenth century’ (Plarrs Lives Online - Royal College of Surgeons).
By 1890, the Teale Fireplace Company had been established in Woodhouse Lane, Leeds, with works in Kelsall Street, run by Lionel Teale, presumably the son of the inventor, and Richard Somers. It manufactured every kind of heating apparatus.

1933. 8vo, pp. xviii, 164, [2] plate half-title, [iv] supplementary card series dividers; with 54 full page illustrations and a series of 12 ‘cinematographic’ films on 480 flicker cards; text a little browned due to paper quality, mainly marginal, with some further occasional light foxing and soiling; card dividers between flip cards a little soiled and have been deliberately torn to facilitate ‘flipping’; in the original blue publisher’s cloth, spine lettered in gilt, rear joint an inner hinges repaired. First edition of this striking and remarkable 1930s guidebook for women, featuring exercises for reproduction, childbirth and sexual pleasure. The book includes a ‘Cinematographic Supplement’ of twelve flicker-card films, each demonstrating the author’s exercise manoeuvres in the sequential photographic style first made famous by Muybridge.
‘It aims at providing a guide for women and those who help them (whether as doctors, midwives, nurses and gymnastic instructresses) in the full evolution and utilisation of the feminine sexual capacities and faculties. These capacities and faculties are generally quite inadequate in practice; they should include both appropriately active participation in the act of sexual congress and appropriate voluntary muscular action which assists the act of birth’ (Preface).
Theodor Hendrik van de Velde (1873-1937), was a Dutch gynaecologist and author of The Perfect Marriage (1926), a liberal treatise which was quickly put on the Catholic Index, a decision which no doubt contributed to the work’s success. It is not clear whether Sex Efficiency through Exercises was also censored, but it is hard to believe that such a work, which includes a series of naked images of women in the flicker cards, would have escaped unscathed in the 1930s. It certainly makes for somewhat uncomfortable reading today, despite being of interest for the innovative illustrative techniques used. A complex and challenging work.

1908. 8vo, pp. viii, 174, [2] advertisement and blank; some very occasional light marginal browning, gutter cracked t p. 81 and 113 but holding firm; uncut in the original brown printed card wrappers, old tape repair to front inside cover, head of spine cracked and nicked with evidence of old repair, a couple of small marginal nicks, covers a little creased. First German edition. A fascination example of how noted and pioneering Chinese medical texts were gradually disseminated for a European audience. The present work by the noted military physician Dr Henry Breitenstein (1848-1930), is a translation of a Dutch work of 1863 by the renowned diplomat, pharmacologist, and sinologist Dr. C. F. M. de Grijs (or de Grys - 1832-1902).
Though now somewhat forgotten, de Grijs had sailed to China in 1857 on a consular mission, assigned with the task of collecting and identifying Chinese flora and fauna in the Amoy region. Many of his papers are now preserved at Leiden University, and he contributed a number of scientific and botanical papers, including articles on Chinese dyes, and publishing an early and important Dutch-Chinese dictionary.
One of his most important contributions, however, was his 1863 translation of the Xiyuan Lu (or Se yuen luh), an early handbook on forensic medicine dating from the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368), 300 years before anything comparable appeared in Europe, according to de Grijs in his introduction. First published in around 1247, it was reprinted in the 15th century and from that time came into general use in the courts of justice as a guide to the duties of coroner, and thus forms an interesting and early record of the theoretical condition of jurisprudence at that time. De Grijs’ translation was published by the Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences in 1863 as Geregtelijke geneeskund, uit het Chineesch vertaald (Forensic Medicine, translated from the Chinese). ‘De Grijs used an edition from 1830 with the title Xiyuan lu jizheng huizuan... In his introduction, De Grijs wrote: “This work is written in a clear style and the main difficulty in translating is to find European synonyms for the Chinese names of plants, animals, stones, medicines, parts of the body, etc.“. He then gave a list of European and Chinese works he had consulted ending: “To what extent I have succeeded in finding the correct European names is up to experts to judge”’ (Kuiper, p 192). A number of consistent misspellings were made however, apparently due to misinterpretations of De Grijs’ handwriting. Dr Henry Breitenstein, himself a military physician, here presents a German translation of that work of 1863, making no corrections, but with the addition of a number of notes. Of interest, Kuiper suggests that Breitenstein felt the work to be of more importance as a guide to Chinese manners and customs, than as a technical handbook of forensic medicine. Modern scholars, however, have come to highly appreciate the handbook. An English translation was first made in 1855 by William Harland and published in Hong Kong as ‘Records of the Washing away of Injuries’. A scholarly edition was published in 1981 by Brian E. McKnight.

1907.]. Together five boxes, Sections I-V, 240 x 190 x 80mm, and with the accompanying wooden and metal viewer; I. Abdomen containing 50 thick cards with mounted stereographs on each; II. Perimeum, Pelvis, and Thorax, containing 50 thick cards with mounted stereographs on each, box without the internal cloth tie; III. Thorax, containing 52 thick cards with mounted stereographs (Axilla no 1 stained); IV. Central nervous System, containing 52 thick cards with mounted stereographs (a couple or cards with ink underlining); V. Lower Limb, containing 46 thick cards with mounted stereographs; in all, 250 cards; cards all a little browned and lightly foxed, but otherwise good, stereographs all good; in the original dark pink cloth boxes, all five with title and explanatory labels on fore-edges (labels are somewhat browned, scuffed and faded in places), all five boxes somewhat faded, frayed and worn, with some splitting to joints, Box 3 most noticeably worn; some wear evident on viewer. ‘New edition’ of this remarkable, graphic, and at times gruesome pathological atlas of anatomy prepared under the auspices of the Department of Anatomy at the University of Edinburgh, and of particular appeal in retaining the original wooden and metal stereoscopic viewer, most often now missing. The five ‘volumes’ of boxed illustrations (resembling books with spine titles and designed to fit library shelves), contain some 250 thick cards each mounted with stereoscopic images together with accompanying explanatory text, and provide a vivid, realistic and unprecedented three dimensional view of the entire human body, helping students to gain important insights into the structure and spaces of the body.
The invention of photography had a big impact on anatomical teaching, but, like drawings, was limited by being a two dimensional representation. Stereoscopy in fact predates photography, but its mass appeal depended entirely upon the development of photographic processes. Originally little more than an optical toy, once it was amalgamated with photography it became a uniquely powerful medium. ‘Stereo photography combined the work of two Victorian inventors, Sir Charles Wheatsone and Sir David Brewster, who used photography to popularise their discoveries. Stereo negatives when exposed in a camera produced two almost identical photographs which were then placed in a viewer that enabled them to be seen three dimensionally’ (Powerhouse Museum). Stereographs, double images (taken from positions equivalent to those of the left and right eyes) presented side-by-side on a flat card and looked at through a special viewer, were displayed to great effect at the Great Exhibition in 1851, and quickly became something of a phenomenon. Initially largely for domestic use, the educational opportunities, especially for the medical profession, were soon recognised. Improved photographic technology in the second half of the 19th century further simplified the production of stereographs. The first first atlas of medicine was produced by Albert Neisser (1855-1916), who between 1894 and 1911 produced 57 boxed sets.
The date of the original edition of The Edinburgh Stereoscopic Atlas of Anatomy, overseen by the Scottish physician David Cunningham (1850-1909), is unclear though is believed to be around 1905-1906 (based on contemporary reviews, although Roberta McGrath in ‘Seeing Her Sex’ p. 144 suggests 1890), with this, the ‘New Edition’ thought to date from 1907. David Waterston, was a lecturer and senior demonstrator at the Anatomical Department of Edinburgh and prepared the anatomical dissections. The first edition was issued by the Caxton Publishing Company. Over time, it was expanded to ten volumes, that included 324 stereographs, with issues also produced in the US and Canada. An equally graphic ‘Edinburgh Stereoscopic Atlas of Obstetrics’ was issued in 1908-1909, edited by George Simpson and Edward Burnet.

1918. Single folio sheet of thick card, 365 x 263mm, seemingly once part of a larger scrapbook of clippings but now loose, with typed agenda sheet and four small related newspaper clippings mounted on verso; recto comprised of a number of unrelated mounted newspaper clippings, small photographs, and membership forms; with remains of linen mount along one margin, card somewhat browned, with some marginal nicks and wear. An unusual, and at first glance rather innocuous if somewhat mysterious, collection of memorabilia, but which in fact shines a light upon the febrile climate of paranoia and suspicion which gripped London and the nation during WWI.
According to the Dictionary of British Women’s Organisations, 1825-1960, the Women’s Imperial Defence Council as a ‘non-political body’... only known from a report of a meeting at the Cannon Street Hotel, London, in 1917, chaired by General Sir Arthur Turner, and addressed exclusively to men, including the future Home Secretary, Sir William Joynson-Hicks’ (p. 169). This meeting, as revealed by the mounted printed agenda, was held on February 8th, 1917 at 2.30pm, with further speeches by Dr Ellis Powell, Mr Arnold White, and A. G. Hales. Such was the interest generated by this first gathering, that a second meeting was organised and held on March 4th at Queen’s Hall, for which over 8000 tickets were apparently sent out, according to the clippings also included here. It was presided over by ‘Mrs Parker, sister of the late Lord Kitchener’.
The formation of the Council, even though it appears to have proven only short-lived, gave a public forum and voice to the firm belief held by many of the existence of a secret German backed cabal or ‘Unseen Hand’, which since the beginning of the war was thought to have been undermining the very ability of the country effectively to pursue the war, by carrying out acts of espionage, and entrapping leading figures of government and the City alike through high-level vice rings, accusations of sexual perversion, female prostitution and bondage rackets. Spy fever inevitably gripped the nation, with over 9000 reports of suspected espionage received by the Metropolitan Police by September 1914. The sinking of the Lusitania in May 1915 only served to heighten the conspiracy theories. The ‘enemy in our midsts’ became an obsession and by the spring of 1917, when the Council held their meetings, MI5 had amassed the names of 250,000 aliens in Britain, with more detailed files held for over 27,000 suspects.
As the printed agenda states, the purpose of the meeting was to demand:’That the Government shall appoint without delay a Royal Commission to make a full investigation as to the identity, or identities, of that treacherous influence in our midst know as the “Unseen Hand”. Further, that the Government shall at once dispense with the services, for the period of the War, of all Officials in the Foreign Office, who have married German subjects, or who have any German connections’.
The apotheosis of this outpouring of suspicion and paranoia, came in the following May, during the infamous libel trial brought by the well-known ‘barefoot’ dancer Maud Allan, against the right wing MP Noel Pemberton Billing - a close associate of one of the speakers at the Cannon Street Hotel, Arnold White. An extraordinary trial which gripped the nation for some six days, Allan was implicitly accused of homosexuality, being rumoured to have had a relationship with Margot Asquith, whilst at the same time being accused of being a German sympathiser by virtue of having undertaken musical training in Berlin. Her ‘erotic’ dancing performances, as well as her recent private appearance in a performance of Oscar Wilde’s notorious play Salome, led to accusations of sexual perversions and sadism. Billing and his associates effectively sealed her fate, however, by their assertion of the existence of a ‘black book’ in the possession of the Germans, and naming 47,000 English men and women vulnerable to blackmail because of their ‘sexual perversions’. During the trial the names of the former PM Herbert Asquith, Margot Asquith, and even of the presiding judge, Justice Darling, were among those mentioned in the book. The book never materialised, but in a way was all the more powerful by its absence. Upon this mythical book was projected a set of paranoid fears and fantasies, concerning the conduct of the war which were at the time incapable of refutation. The trial appears farcical to the modern eye, shamefully conducted on both sides, and with a huge amount of hysteria and baseless accusations. Nevertheless, the prevailing mood of suspicion held sway, and Billings was found not guilty. Pressure mounted on the government and legislation was passed to close German banks, and large rallies continued to be held throughout the summer calling for increasing internment.

1898. 8vo, pp. [xiv] ‘Commendations from Eminent persons’ and advertisement, [iii]-264, [20] advertisements; frontispiece portrait of Wood-Allen; lightly browned throughout, with some occasional minor soiling, and small insignificant ink staining to outer margins between pp. 89-120; in the original plum publisher’s cloth, upper cover lettered in blind, spine lettered in gilt, head and tail of spine a little bumped and worn, light surface wear and rubbing, extremities lightly bumped and worn. First edition, seemingly later issue, of this popular advice manual, the work of the noted educationalist Mary Wood-Allen, and published as part of the ‘Self and Sex Series’ commissioned by Sylvanus Stall (1847-1915), the proprietor of the Vir Publishing Company, and who authored a number of volumes in the series aimed at a male readership.
‘Its Self and Sex series commenced publication in 1897 and included not only Stall’s several contributions to this genre, but the works of such authors as Emma Drake, Mrs. Adolphe Hoffman, Frederick A. Rupp, Hans Wegener and Mary Wood-Allen’ (Atwater 3312).
‘Wood-Allen divides her treatise into three parts. The first is devoted to topics typical of women’s physiologies of the 19th century, i.e., food, sleep, “tight clothing,” exercise, bathing, etc. Part II is devoted to the diseases of women, e.g., those arising from the “artificialities of civilized life”, menstruation disorders, the “solitary vice,”, poor posture, etc. Part III discusses love, courtship, “the gospel of heredity”, etc. What a young woman ought to know is the companion volume to Slyvanus Stall’s What a young man ought to know’ (Atwater 3859).
In her work ‘The diseases of virgins: green sickness, chlorosis and the problems of puberty’, Helen King highlights one particular area of concern for the social purity movement - that of dancing. Wood-Allen notes that it is ‘a pleasant and graceful exercise’ (p. 187), but that it should be done only in the correct social locations and circumstances. ‘If dancing could be conducted in the daytime, out of doors, among well-known home friends and companions, in proper dress, and with no round dances, there would be much to commend, and little to condemn’ (p. 74).
In the present issue, the work begins with a series of commendations for the work by leading social reformers, each accompanied by a portrait. This issue has a more extensive list of commendations, that other variants previously handled. Of the 10 figures cites, eight are leading female commentators: Lady Henry Somerset; Mrs Laura Ormiston Chant; Mrs Mary Lowe Dickinson; Mrs Matilda B. Carse; Mrs Elizabeth Cady Stanton; Mrs May Wright Sewall; Mrs Helen Campbell; and Mrs Lillian M. N. Stevens, and with further testimony given by Margaret Warner Morley and Elisabeth Robinson Scovil. The present issue includes additional advertisements at the end of the work.

1844. Small 4to, pp. [ii] blank, [ii] title-page, iv, 54, [2] publisher’s catalogue; with lithograph frontispiece, three numbered lithograph plates, and four engraved text figures; paper a little browned, with some foxing along title-page gutter, and sporadically throughout with some occasional faint soiling; with two loosely inserted items, one a pencil inscription referring to optical works, the other a typed letter addressed to Sir Charles Parsons on headed Grubb Parsons paper dated 1929; in the original dark blue blindstamped cloth, with title title within roundel on upper cover, neatly recased with new spine and endpapers, covers a little sunned and stained, small nick to upper cover, with light wear to extremities and corners; from the library of Grubb Parsons’ chief optical engineer David Sinden, with the Grubb Parsons & Co., address stamp at head of first blank; overall a very good copy. Second edition, (first also 1844), and a nice association copy, of this important and early contemporary account of the recent astronomical advances being made by William Parsons, third Earl of Rosse (1800-1867) on his estate of Birr Castle near Parsonstown in Ireland. Parsons had long been focused upon the idea of constructing a large telescope and worked for five years to find an alloy suitable for the mirror. His mirrors were made of speculum metal, an alloy of approximately two parts copper to one part tin by weight. Adding more copper makes the mirror less brittle, but is more susceptible to the development of small surface fissures during the cooling process, an tarnishes faster. After much experimentation he succeeded in casting and cooling a three foot mirror, and so in 1842 he began work on his ‘monster’ six foot mirror. The present work provides an account of these experiments, which eventually saw the installation of his ‘Leviation’ with the six foot speculum, and which was at the time the largest in the world. The telescope had a focal length of fifty-four feet and with it he was able to make detailed studies of nebulae, took some of the earliest lunar photographs, and was the first to detect the spiral nature of some nebulae. The ‘Leviation’ was immediately treated as something of a marvel and became a tourist attraction, and Wood’s account no doubt did much to inspire this.
The present copy was once in the collection of David Sinden, chief optical engineer at the noted manufacturers of optical instruments Sir Howard Grubb, Parsons & Company, based in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The company was first founded in Dublin by Thomas Grubb in 1833 as the Grubb Telescope Company. During the 19th century it produced a number of famous telescopes including refractors for the Vienna Observatory, the Melbourne Observatory and the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. Sir Charles Parsons acquired the company in 1925, and loosely inserted is a letter addressed to him and signed by the manager C. Young and dated 1929. Young tells Sir Charles about the purchase of the present copy from Sotheran’s. It also mentions that Young will meet with ‘Dr. Lockyer’ at Sidmouth ‘to discuss the new mounting’. Sinden later founded the Sinden Optical Company, and many of his fine instruments may be found in observatories world-wide today.

1928. Presentation Offprint: 4to, [169] - 178; with six half-tone figures; paper somewhat browned due to quality, with some minor edge wear and nicking along fore-edge; ex-libris of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, with their stamp at head of first leaf and on upper wrapper; in grey card wrappers, with later linen back-strip so retaining the original upper cover with printed paper label, though with replacement rear cover, upper cover somewhat browned with small tear to fore-edge; presentation copy signed at head of title-page by Zand, with a further authorial note at tail of printed label. Presentation offprint, an an ‘extrait des Archives du Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle, 6e Série, T. II’ (printed label). A scarce neurological work by the Polish Jewish neurologist Nathalie Zylberlast-Zand (1883-1942), described by Esther Lovejoy as ‘a physician of outstanding ability’ (Women Doctors of the World, p. 174), and who, as highlighted by the present article, worked closely with the noted neurologist Edward Flatau (1868-1932).
Zand gained her medical diploma from the University of Geneva under the supervision of Eduoard Martin, and also passed the state examination at the National University of Kharkiv in Ukraine. She ‘specialised in the pathology of the central nervous system, and contributed to the literature on this important subject. Her papers were published not only in Poland but also in France and England. In 1935, she reported that about 15 per cent of the physicians in Poland were women, four of whom held the title of docent on the Medical Faculty of the University of Warsaw. Dr. Zand represented the Medical Women’s International Association at the Congress of the International Federation of University Women held at Cracow in 1936, and the following year she was a delegate to the meeting of the Medical Women’s International Association at Edinburgh. Nationally and Internationally, she was interested in the professional and political status of women - too interested perhaps. “Polish medical women are firmly convinced that equality of rights should be strictly maintained and take active steps whenever their rights seem to be threatened” was one of her last recorded pronouncements. That was dangerous doctrine. Dr. Zand and Dr. Garlicka were among the thousands of freedom-loving people who “disappeared” during the debacle which followed the invasion of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union at the beginning of World War II’ (ibid). Research subsequent to Lovejoy’s work of 1957 has discovered that Zand and her husband were forced to live in the walled Warsaw ghetto, during which time she continued to work as a physician. Sometime around September 24th 1942 she was deported to Pawiak prison in Warsaw where she is believed to have been executed.