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Medicine : an exhibition of books relating to medicine and surgery from the collection formed by J.K. Lilly. An Exhibition: a machine-readable transcription

Lilly Library (Indiana University, Bloomington)

Transcribed from:

Lilly Library (Indiana University, Bloomington). Randall, David A. , Bennett, J. Q. Medicine : an exhibition of books relating to medicine and surgery from the collection formed by J.K. Lilly. Lilly Library, Bloomington, IN, 1966. 100 p. : ill., facsims. ; 28 cm.

Lilly Library call number: Z688.M4 I6 1966

Medicine:

An exhibition of books
relating to medicine and surgery
from the collection
formed by
J. K. Lilly

LILLY LIBRARY/INDIANA UNIVERSITY

THE J. K. LILLY COLLECTION OF ORIGINAL APPEARANCES OF CLASSICAL WORKS IN THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE AND SURGERY

J. K. Lilly's interest in collecting medical books in their original appearances budded early but flowered late. It was not too late, however, for him to acquire, at what now seem modest sums, a distinguished group, remarkable not only for their importance but also for their fine condition.

He showed some interest in this field from the very beginning of his collecting career. It was fortunate that, at that time, he could blithely turn down Vesalius's De Humani Corporis Fabrica (Basel, 1543) and Harvey's De Motu Cordis (Frankfort, 1628) on the grounds either that he was "out of funds at the moment" or that "he would prefer to wait for a better copy" and still have second and third chances to acquire them. Today a collector, solvent or not, disregards even mediocre copies of these at his peril, although neither ranks very high among medical rarities.

Among Mr. Lilly's earliest purchases were works of Sir William Osler, for whom he had unbounded admiration. In 1937 he purchased from the writer, then at Scribner's, New York, a small collection of Osler, including a first edition of Aequanimitas with Other Addresses to Medical Students, Nurses and Practitioners of Medicine (London, 1904). This great book had a special attraction for him because, as he explained, the Eli Lilly Company, instead of giving medical school graduates a few sample bottles of pills as a souvenir of this momentous occasion, had come up with a different idea. They sent each a copy of Aequanimitas with the following letter.

ELI LILLY AND COMPANY—Indianapolis, U.S.A.
Office of
Eli Lilly, President
Nineteen Thirty-Six
Dear Doctor:

Together with congratulations on your attainment of a medical degree, this volume of addresses by Sir William Osler, who adorned your profession in the United States for so many years, is cordially presented.

As the addresses by this master mind of modern medicine are read, may you catch his vision of the almost boundless possibilities of your chosen profession.

May you share with him his "relish of knowledge" and his absorbing love and passionate, persistent search for truth.

Above all, may there come to you an inspiration which will enable you to live a rich, a happy, and an abundant life.

Sincerely yours,

ELI LILLY AND COMPANY
President

The results had been gratifying indeed. Over the years some 100,000 copies had been distributed, including a Spanish translation, and had incidentally provided a welcome source of income to the Osler estate.

Among Lilly's many collecting ventures at this time, his bookish interests were mainly literary and his collecting of medical works was sporadic. He twice refused offers of Harvey's De Motu Cordis, perhaps the most important work in the whole history of medicine. Though over forty copies are known, almost all are in institutions, and it is seldom indeed, nowadays, that a private collector has an opportunity to acquire it. Osler records having had five copies in his possession at one time or another. But that was another era. In 1935 Jake Zeitlin offered Mr. Lilly a copy for $2,500, and in 1937 Charles Scribner's offered him a copy on thick paper at $3,500; both were rejected on the seemingly preposterous grounds that they were not in original bindings and he would prefer to wait for such a copy.

In 1953 he secured through Scribner's a beautiful copy in original vellum for $5,500, the top price he ever paid for a medical or scientific book. This is, I believe, the last perfect copy which has been in commerce. Lilly was taking a great chance by waiting, but his patience paid off.

Through the 1930's his interest was centered largely on American medicine rather than English or continental. He acquired such works as Noah Webster's A Brief History of Epidemic and Pestilential Diseases (two volumes, Hartford, 1799), the standard work on the subject in its day, and William Beaumont's Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice (Plattsburgh, 1833), one of the pioneer works of medical research in America. At one time or another he owned three copies before finally securing one which met with his exacting standards of condition. Though a relatively common book, it is rarely found really fine, with uncracked hinges and perfect label. Osler said of it, "To the medical bibliographers there are few more treasured Americana than the brown-backed, poorly printed octavo volume of 280 pages with the imprint: Plattsburgh, 1833."

Oliver Wendell Holmes was a great favorite, and holdings include his first two medical works. The Library of Practical Medicine, Vol. VII (Boston, 1836) is the only recorded presentation copy and has a distinguished provenance, being the Wakeman-Wilson copy with an autograph letter with the rare signature "Oliver Wendell Holmes, M.D." inserted. The Boylston Prize Dissertations (Boston, 1838) is also inscribed. The famous The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever is present in its original appearance (Boston, 1843), while Border Lines of Knowledge in Some Provinces of Medical Science (Boston, 1862) is presented to James Russell Lowell.

It should be mentioned that Lilly was collecting at the same time, and in the same somewhat desultory way, milestone works in the history of science, with such emphasis as there was on mathematics. If desirable copies of important works came along, they were acquired, but no especial effort was made to seek them out.

In 1939 Scribner's published one of the first catalogues of its kind to appear in America: Science and Thought in the Nineteenth Century. In the "Introduction" to the catalogue, my Scribner associate, John Carter, who had assembled and annotated most of its contents, wrote as follows:

Of recent years, discriminating collectors have turned their attention increasingly to the first editions of those books which have in one way or another influenced the progress of science or the development of thought and human behavior. And what more natural and proper? The names of Volta and Ampère, of Faraday and Kelvin, commemorate by their everyday use the services of their owners to civilisation. Darwin and Freud have added adjectives to the language, and Karl Marx is more powerful today than when Das Kapital was first published.

The incurious and the hasty do not stop to ask why a volt is so called. The thoughtful man wonders, and finds out. The book collector goes further: he searches for the first appearance of Volta's epoch-making paper, from which every electric battery in the world today derives, and he treasures it for what it is— a cardinal document in the history of Progress.

Many of the great names, the historic books, in the history of science and thought are indeed sufficiently familiar. Any schoolboy will connect the atomic theory with the name of Dalton, the theory of the conservation of energy with that of Helmholtz; antiseptic surgery with Lister, Positivism with Comte, X-Rays with Röntgen, shorthand with Pitman, finger prints with Galton, or Zarathustra with Nietzsche. But there are many less obvious, though equally important landmarks; and others besides schoolboys might well be puzzled to say when was the first recorded case of appendicitis, what is the origin of the square root of minus one or the coefficient of friction, or who first distinguished proteins. Why is Plimsoll's Line so called? Who inaugurated modern methods of contraception? Who discovered Neanderthal Man, or the infra-red rays of the spectrum? Who coined such words as fluorescence and electron? Who was responsible for the modern system of food-canning, or the higher criticism, or the ticker-tape, or colloidal chemistry.

No one who has not dabbled in this kind of collecting can have any idea of the fascination of the search for facts and achievements, and their printed origins; the tracking down of a pregnant idea or train of philosophic thought to the mind that first conceived it. Hilaire Belloc once said of a favorite work that it was 'a book like a decisive battle'; but this phrase, a fine hyperbole when used of a piece of pure literature, might be applied with absolute literalness to dozens of books listed in the following pages.

We have endeavored to assemble here a representative selection of books and pamphlets illustrating the progress of science and thought in the nineteenth century. There are certain gaps, where some clew to the crucial book has eluded our researches, or where some desired item has proved unobtainable; but we believe that everything offered is significant in its field, whether by its direct relation to the world today or its influence upon the thought of its own and subsequent generations. This material is of a character, we believe, to attract the collector of vision, and to command the attention of those libraries and institutions which take the history of science and of thought for their province.

It was a modest catalogue, with modestly priced books (75 per cent of the items were under $25), but it sparked Lilly's imagination. In all his vast collecting career Lilly has been, above all, a "collector of vision." From this catalogue he acquired R. T. H. Laennec's De l'Auscultation Médiate (Paris, 1819), recording his invention of the stethoscope, two volumes in original wrappers, paper labels, $180, together with the much rarer first English translation by John Forbes (London, 1821—Garrison-Morton give 1834 as the date for the English translation, a rare error in this encyclopedic work); Henry Gray's Anatomy Descriptive and Surgical (London, 1858), which the catalogue accurately described as "a book rarely found in original condition," was purchased for $12 (the latest copy offered in trade was priced at £150). The famed Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace joint paper, On the Tendency of Species to form varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Species and Varieties by Natural Means of Selection, in its original appearance in the papers of "The Linnaean Society" (London, 1858), was acquired, with some reluctance, being rebound, for $60. It was later replaced by a perfect copy in original blue printed wrappers.

Fascination in books of this kind, which had influenced thought and the mind of man, grew upon Lilly as his interest in collecting literature lessened, as the writer recorded in his The J. K. Lilly Collection of Edgar Allan Poe, an Account of its Formation (Christmas, 1964). Just at this time clouds were gathering over the world and, until after 1945, he had little time or inclination for collecting anything. In 1947 Scribner's issued another catalogue, Science, Medicine, Economics, and from this he obtained some very good things, among them Georg Bartisch's Ophthalmodouleia: Das ist Augendienst . . . (Dresden, 1583), perhaps the most famous and lavishly illustrated of all the early books on eye surgery, original vellum, $335; Andreas Vesalius' De Humani Corporis Fabrica, second edition (Basel, 1555), in original calf, $350 (later replaced with a finer copy in original vellum) ; and Franz Anton Mesmer's Mémoire sur la Découverte du Magnétisme Animal (Geneva and Paris, 1779), $45.

It was at this time that he made a decision to go on to form a representative collection of the classic books in the history of medicine. But what were they? Everyone knew some of the great books and traditional rarities. Picking fifty or so of these items would be easy—getting them, of course, quite another matter.

Chief among the standard guide books at that time were Sir William Osler's massive volume recording his own library, Bibliotheca Osleriana (Oxford, 1919), and Garrison and Morton's Medical Bibliography. An Annotated Check-List of Texts Illustrating the History of Medicine (London, 1943). These were invaluable but much too comprehensive. Osler listed 7,783 items, Garrison, 5,506. Choulant-Frank's History and Bibliography of Anatomic Illustration (Chicago, 1920) was indispensable on a subject in which Lilly was especially interested and in which his collection is particularly rich. Francis R. Packard's History of Medicine in the United States (New York, 1931) was also useful.

What was needed but not available was a guide for the discriminating collector who was forming a personal, not a research, library. Lilly liked collecting by lists. He had acquired nearly all of the Grolier Club's One Hundred Books Famous in English Literature and A. Edward Newton's One Hundred Good Novels, and what he wanted was some similar guide to medical books.

Since one did not exist, he characteristically decided to have one created. There was considerable discussion of the best objective way to have this done. Lilly wryly related that he once requested a famous dealer to recommend a list of important works on another subject only to find that 95 per cent of the books suggested were reposing on the dealer's shelves. The choice finally fell on W. R. Le Fanu, Librarian, Royal College of Surgeons of England, who on request compiled a list of Two Hundred Key Books in the History of Medicine and Surgery. This distinguished librarian began his list with Johannes de Ketham's Fasciculus anatomiae (Venice, 1491) and ended it with Howard Florey's (and others') Antibiotics (Oxford, 1949). Le Fanu's list was drawn, correctly, with no consideration given to the availability of the recommended books and contained many of legendary rarity. Completion of the list was impossible, and even existing specialized libraries lacked a goodly number of titles. Included, for example, was the first edition of Marcello Malpighi's De Pulmonibus Observationes Anatomicae . . . (Bologna, 1661). So rare is this work that as recently as 1944 that eminent authority Professor F. J. Cole remarked in his History of Comparative Anatomy that no copy had ever been seen in England. Lilly had to content himself with the second edition (Hafniae, 1663), itself an uncommon book, there being no copy in the Harvey Cushing collection, while the one in the Osler library lacks two plates. But he was never quite happy with it.

Lilly set to work at quite a target. He had perhaps 15 per cent of the books on the list when it was formulated. How amazingly successful he was in less than a half decade is reflected by the fact that when he turned his library over to Indiana University in 1955 he had about 65 per cent in the editions specified and over 75 per cent in some form. For instance, for Cesar Lombroso's L'Uomo Delinquente (Milan, 1876), there had to be substituted the later edition (Rome, 1878), and for Ivan Petrovich Pavlov's Lectures ... on the principal digestive glands (St. Petersburg, 1897), its first translation (Berlin, 1898).

It should be emphasized that the "Le Fanu Two Hundred" by no means limited the collector merely to those works recommended. It simply acted as a guideline and general directive, and a very useful one, frequently bringing attention to significant works which would have been otherwise overlooked. If the recommended work could not be found, others representative of the author's achievements were sought. For example, Ambroise Paré's first work, La methode de traicter les playes (Paris, 1545), which was Le Fanu's choice to represent this great surgeon, proved unobtainable; but his Cinq Livres de Chirurgie (Paris, 1572) was acquired, richly bound in typical Lyonnaise style, probably for presentation. This has been called by several commentators Paré's chef-d'oeuvre, and Miss Doe, in her bibliography, comments upon its extraordinary rarity.

It is of interest to note that some of the most elusive works proved to be not the early rarities but those published in the last half of the nineteenth century. For example, Hugh Owen Thomas's Diseases of the Hip (Liverpool, 1875) and David Ferrier's The Functions of the Brain (London, 1876) never were obtained. There was no question of price involved and indeed, in most cases, it would then have been small. The books simply never appeared on the market. It should be remembered that works of this type, unlike literature, do not often find casual buyers who discard them after reading. They immediately pass into libraries or into the hands of specialists who hold on to them. Nor are they likely to be printed, in the first place, in large editions.

As the writer pointed out in discussing J. K. Lilly's formation of his Poe collection, he was lucky in his timing—collector's luck, if you wish. Though the great medical books were not then as available and as cheap as they had been a generation before, still they had not anywhere reached their present rarity, popularity, and price. One could still reasonably expect to have an offer of several decent copies of most desiderata within, say, a half decade, and at prices which would not require mortgaging one's home. This is no longer true. Also, a most important consideration was that there were some very knowledgeable contemporary bookdealers active in this field, experienced in both English and continental markets, who could supply material of the type wanted. The late Ernst Weil, from whom (though indirectly) Lilly obtained some of his best books, was an important source, as was the late Raphael King, and the cooperation of Percy Muir was invaluable. E. P. Goldschmidt and Davis & Orioli also supplied material. But by far the greatest part came from Scribner's.

Also, to use a felicitous medical phrase of Gordon Ray's, when writing recently of nineteenth-century literature, "prices had not yet been inflated to the point of dropsy." Lilly's entire expenditure on his medical collection was scarcely double the price of his first edition of Poe's Tamerlane (Boston, 1827), which was $25,000. Indeed, fewer than five books in the collection cost into four figures. Had he attempted to do in the decade following 1955 what he accomplished in the decade before then, it would have been proved impossible.

It might be mentioned that, though a generous buyer and seldom questioning a price if he wanted a book (though he often returned things on the grounds of condition) , Lilly invariably collected within a strict budget. He never gave a blanket order for any books on any list to be purchased as they appeared. His dealers, therefore, had to exercise discretion in the spending of funds allocated to them. In practice this meant that they offered him the uncommon books—those unlikely to appear on the market reasonably soon again—first. Generally it was on these books that a higher profit could be obtained, while the more common books which (one thought then) would always be available were often not offered at all—they could be sold next year if real rarities could not be obtained.

For example, in September, 1953, the writer sent ten desirable medical books for Mr. Lilly's consideration. With the letter was enclosed a clipping from an English dealer's catalogue offering a set of Richard Bright's Reports of Medical Cases . . . (1827-31) for £450, Lilly having purchased his set a few months before for $485 (a copy sold this year at auction for $3,500), a gentle reminder to the collector as to the moderation of Scribner prices.

Back came a typical answer.

This is a somewhat tardy reply to your letter of September 26 but I waited until the medical books came in and were catalogued before replying.

You will recall that earlier in the year I wrote you what my budget with the Scribner Book Store for 1953 would be. I have to report that with the present receipt of the ten medical books forwarded, we are now right on the button so please don't ship me anything else this year or at least not until after December 15 and then only with the proviso that the invoice may be settled during the first week in January of 1954. In this connection, I wish to proceed with the medical book want-list to the tune, as we go into the new year, of a budget of $10,000 so please don't commit me to any outlay beyond this sum until you hear from me further on the subject which may probably not be until late in 1954!

In view of the above I may not presently consider the other item mentioned in your letter of September 26.

Thank you so much, indeed, for your good offices—past, present, and future.

It is hoped that sometime reasonably soon a properly annotated account of his holdings in medicine will be printed. Meanwhile the writer lists a selection from them, limited to those he thinks are, for one reason or another—importance, rarity, bibliographical interest, condition, association, etc.—of especial interest.

It should be noted that, with two exceptions, all books mentioned in the catalogue are from J. K. Lilly's personal collection. This has since been greatly augmented by purchase and gift. The exceptions are the George A. Poole, Jr., copy of Rabanus Maurus' De sermonum proprietate, sen de universo (Strassburg, 1467?), the earliest known printed book to include a section dealing with medicine. Also Johannes de Ketham's Fasciculus Medicinae (Venice, 5 Feb. 1493-4), the first Italian edition, noted for its fine wood engravings, the first anatomic illustrations of any kind in any incunabula. This is the Dyson Perrins copy with bookplate and notes in his hand.

The Bernardo Mendel collection of Latin Americana included a fine collection of early medical books from "south of the border," beginning with Alonso de la Vera Cruz's Phisica Speculatio (Mexico City, 1555), the first scientific work published in the New World. And there have been many individual purchases. Henri Dunant's privately printed and very rare Un Souvenir de Solférino (Geneva, 1862), which was directly responsible for the founding of the International Red Cross Society and for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, is the most recent.

A notable gift was that of the very comprehensive medico-historical collection formed by the late Dr. Edgar F. Kiser, who was closely associated for many years with the University's School of Medicine. Presented by Dr. and Mrs. Bernard D. Rosenak, Indianapolis, and Mr. and Mrs. Herman P. Anspach, Highland Park, Illinois, and especially rich in early American and Indiana rarities, this beautifully complemented Lilly's holdings. It included a notable lot of the works of Beaumont, including a presentation copy of the Observations; a presentation copy of Daniel Drake's On the Principal Diseases of the Interior Valley of North America (Cincinnati, 1850-55); and the first two medical books printed in Indiana, Dr. S. H. Selman's The Indian Guide to Health (Columbus, Ind., 1836), and Buell Eastman's A Practical Treatise on Diseases Peculiar to Women and Girls (Connersville, 1845). Both works are examples of the familiar "family physician" and abound in frontier medical lore, and both are uncommon, Byrd-Peckham (Indiana Imprints) locating five copies of the former and three of the latter.

However, no books from such sources are included in the following catalogue (except the two Poole incunabula), and to that extent it does not give a true picture of the Lilly Library's current holdings in this subject. The fact that some important book is not recorded does not mean that the Library does not have it, as witness those listed above: it simply means that Mr. Lilly did not possess it. But without the books recorded here the Library could scarcely claim to have a significant collection at all.

Formal collations are not usually given, as this is not a bibliography but simply a report on one aspect of a many-sided collector's interests. It should be emphasized that Lilly chose every one of these books personally, rejecting many more than he ever accepted. The notes may, in some cases, read as though they were taken from booksellers' descriptions. If so, that's sometimes what they are! All books referred to are first editions, unless otherwise specified. The census of known copies, occasionally given, is from standard sources and is probably in some cases already changed.

David A. Randall
Librarian, Lilly Library

INDEX

Subject entries have been made only for those subjects to which a separate section of the catalogue is devoted. Number references are to catalogue order, and not to pages. Titles without headings have number references in text.

1.

HRABANUS (OR RABANUS) MAURUS. [De sermonum proprietate, sive Opus de universo.] [Folio 138 verso, here misfoliated 137] De medicina. [Strassburg: The R Printer (Adolf Rusch), 1467.]

Bound with, and following: Zacharius Chrysopolitanus. [Concordantia evangelistarum. Strassburg, 1473.] Two works in one vol., folio, early blind-stamped leather with bosses and portions of stamped leather clasps. Tall copies with wide margins, both works with initials painted in red throughout. The Hrabanus lacks the initial blank leaf, but the two terminal blanks are present and genuine. Editio princeps of both books.

Lilly Library call number: BR 65 .Z3 vault

Hrabanus' encyclopedic dictionary is the first printed book to have a specific section devoted entirely to medicine. It shares the honors of medical printing priority with a single-sheet Laxierkalendar assigned to 1457, and with Gerson's short tract De pollutione nocturna, considered to be on a medical subject although largely theological in treatment, which is assigned by Goff to "about 1466."

Hrabanus, a pupil of Alcuin, became Abbot of Fulda and later Bishop of Mainz. He was born about 776 A.D. and died in 856; his lifetime's labors as teacher, divine, and author earned him the sobriquet of Primus Praeceptor Germaniae, "first teacher of Germany." He is credited with the authorship of the hymn, Veni Creator.


2.

JOHANNES DE KETHAM. [Fasciculus Medicinae.] In comincia el dignissimo Fasiculo de Medicina in Volgare ... . Venice: Giovanni & Gregorio di Gregorii, 5 Feb. 1493/4.

Folio in sixes (a-h6 i4), old vellum. 9 full-page woodcuts, 1 full-page schema on uroscopy. Goff K 17, one of six copies located. The others are at Huntington, New York Public, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Pierpont Morgan, and Yale.

Lilly Library call number: R 128.6 .K4 1493

The second edition of the first printed book ever to have anatomical illustrations. The first edition, printed by the same printers in 1491, was in the original Latin; the present translation is by Sebastianus Manilius. The text is a compilation of short medical treatises on uroscopy, women's diseases, the plague, and other matters, but the great value and interest of the book lies in its illustrations, probably done by Gentile Bellini. It contains one of four known examples of multicolor printing produced prior to the sixteenth century.

Choulant describes the plates at great length, pp. 116-19, but the copy he used lacked d [1], on the recto of which appears the figure of a woman with her thoracic and abdominal cavities cut open. The two later plates in the book [e 2 recto and f 2 verso] do not occur in the first edition. That on e 2 recto depicts a patient being examined for the plague, the physician holding a sponge before his mouth and feeling the patient's pulse. The plate on f 2 verso (illustrated in this catalogue) precedes the Anatomia of Mundinus, appended here to the Fasciculus as usual. In the present copy this plate has been overprinted in red, black, olive, and yellow, off register (mostly to the right) and waterstained; certain areas have been retouched by hand with an overlaying wash of brown.

The present copy is from the Dyson Perrins collection and sold in 1947 for £320. Of the first edition, 1491, Goff records four copies: Huntington, Boston Medical, Yale, and the then privately owned Louis Silver copy. This appeared recently at the Newberry Library sale of duplicate and surplus material and brought $26,600, the highest price ever paid for a medical work and within half of what Lilly spent on his entire collection.


THE CLASSIC MASTERS: Nos. 3-7

3.

HIPPOCRATES. [Aphorismi sive Sententiae.] Hippocratis Medici Sententiarum Particula ... . Florence: 16 Oct. 1494.

Folio, modern half calf, initial blank present and genuine.

Lilly Library call number: R 126 .H6 A65 1494 vault

The editio princeps of the aphorisms of "the Father of Medicine," in the Latin translation of Laurentius Laurentianus; one of four copies in America. The text of the aphorisms is followed by Laurentianus's Latin translation of the lengthy commentary by Galen, thus including in one book the work of the two most famous names in Graeco-Roman medicine.


4.

HIPPOCRATES. Hippocratis ... octoginta Volumina ... nunc primum in lucem aedita ... . Rome, 1525.

4to, old half vellum.

Lilly Library call number: R 126 .H51 1525

This is the first complete appearance in print of what Osler called the corpus Hippocraticum, the collective doctrine of the greatest physician of the ancient world. Translated and edited by Fabio Calvi of Ravenna and dedicated to Pope Clement VII, it preceded the Aldine Greek text by a year. At p. XXXI appears the Hippocratic Oath, beginning, "I swear by Apollo, Physician, and Asklepios and Hygeiea and Panacea and all the gods and goddesses, making them my witness, that I will fulfill according to my ability and judgment this oath and this covenant." This oath is still administered on conferring the degree of Medicinae Doctor, often with the prefatory injunction, "Let each man swear by that which to him is sacred."


5.

CLAUDIUS GALENUS. [Opera Omnia, Graece.] Galeni Librorum Pars Prima [Quinta]. Venice, 1525.

5 vols., folio, contemporary brown calf.

Lilly Library call number: R 126 .G3 1525

First printed edition of Galen's works in the original Greek. At the time when printing first attained general acceptance and commercial importance, medical science was completely dominated by the Galenic tradition, just as biology was by that of Aristotle. It was natural, therefore, that the work of these great masters, which had come to occupy in the scientific world a position hardly less important than Holy Writ, should have been constantly printed and reprinted.


6.

GUIDO GUIDI AS "VlDUS VlDIUS". Chirurgia è Graeco in Latinum conversa. Paris, 1544.

Folio, old calf. Many woodcuts, some full-page.

Lilly Library call number: R 126 .A1 G9 vault

The translator, Guidi, was physician to Francis I of France. This book prints for the first time the Greek surgical texts of Hippocrates, Galen, and Oribasius, in Latin translation. The text is based on ancient manuscripts of the Greek originals in the Laurentian Library at Florence.

There is no doubt that the extraordinarily fine illustrations go back to the classic models and therefore display for us the true Hippocratic principles of surgical practice as preserved by the Byzantine Greeks. The woodcuts are after designs by F. Primaticcio, an Italian Renaissance artist, who in turn was inspired by the figures in the manuscripts. François Jollat has been suggested as the engraver.


7.

AVICENNA. Libri Quinque Canonis Medicinae Abu Ali Principis, Filii Sinae, alias corrupte Avicennae ... Arabice nunc primum impressi. Rome, 1593.

2 vols., folio, old vellum, uncut. The above title is taken from the added Latin title page, which is laid in loose behind the regular Arabic title (at the back of Vol. I, since the Arabic text reads from the back forward). With the bookplate of the Prince of Liechtenstein.

Lilly Library call number: R 128.3 .A9 vault

The most famous physician and theorist of the later Middle Ages, Abu Ali al Husain ibn Abdullah ibn Sina, known as Avicenna, was born near Bokhara in 980 A.D. and died in 1037. He was the author of about one hundred treatises, most of them short; but "the best known among them, and that to which Avicenna owed his European reputation, is the Canon of Medicine, of which an Arabic edition appeared at Rome in 1593. From the 12th to the 17th century, Avicenna was the guide of medical study in European universities, and up to the year 1650 or thereabouts the Canon was still used as a textbook at Louvain and Montpellier" (Encyclopaedia Britannica).

"His Canon," says Garrison-Morton, "is the most famous medical textbook ever written. Of it Neuberger says, 'It stands for the epitome of all precedent development, the final certification of all Graeco-Arabic medicine.' "

Avicenna's great treatise was normally studied, during the Renaissance, in the Latin translation by Gherardo of Cremona, first published at Strassburg (before 1473) and frequently reprinted. This is the editio princeps of the Arabic text.


8.

HANS VON GERSDORFF. Feldtbüch der wundtartzney. [Strassburg]: Schott, [1517?]

4to, contemporary calf. 27 full- or half-page woodcuts, one folding.

Lilly Library call number: RD 30 .G4 vault

This work contains the first picture of an amputation ever printed, according to Garrison, as well as many other instructive pictures of early surgical procedures. Gersdorff later opposed Paré's abandonment of boiling oil for the cauterization of wounds.

Collates: [4] LXXXIV ff., 1 folding plate; a4 A-O6. Apparently the undated issue reported in Bibliotheca Walleriana 3506, there described as "[Strassburg, J. Schott, 1517.]" without cited authority and probably later. BMC (Vol. 85, col. 59) records the folio issue of 95 leaves with imprint and date 1517. The folding plate is the skeleton described by Choulant (pp. 162-63), with Schott's mark but without the date or printed matter above the plate; the visceral plate (folio XII verso) is that described by Choulant at p. 165, full-length, with date 1517 in lower left corner.


VENEREAL DISEASE Nos. 9-13

9.

GIROLAMO FRACASTORO. Syphilis sive Morbus Gallicus. Verona, 1530.

4to, vellum.

Lilly Library call number: RC 201 .A2 F7 1531

The most famous of medical poems. It epitomized contemporary knowledge of syphilis, gave it its present name, and recognized a venereal cause. Mercury was advised as a remedy.

The poem was often reprinted and was made the subject of a handlist and a bibliography in the 1930's. The first complete English translation was by Nahum Tate (1686), later Poet Laureate.

Of special interest and rarity in this field is Thomas Paynell's translation of Ulrich Hutten's De Morbo Gallico (1519) under the title Of the Wood Called Guaiacum that healeth the frenche pockes, and also helpeth the goute in the feete ..., published in London in 1540 (No.10—RC 200.6 .H9 1540).

Von Hutten, one of the most distinguished scholars and poets of the German Renaissance, suffered from syphilis. He tells in the first person of his many attempts to cure himself before he discovered guaiacum wood, which came from "that place where the langth of Amerike, stretchynge to the Northe, doth end." So efficacious was it considered in the cure of syphilis that, to quote the present work, "the physicions wolde not allowe it, perceyvynge that thyre profit wolde decay thereby."

In the early Tudor prose of Thomas Paynell, canon of Martin Abbey, the translation has a character and charm difficult to communicate. In his preface he tells of his diffidence in attempting the translation of "that greate clerke of Almayne," being persuaded by the printer only because of the good which might come of it.

Among other works in the Lilly Library on the subject is a fine copy of John Hunter's A Treatise on The Venereal Disease (London, 1786), uncut, in modern half calf (No. 11—RC 201 .H9 1786). "Hunter inoculated himself with matter taken from a gonorrheal patient who, unknown to Hunter, also had syphilis. Hunter contracted the latter disease and maintained that gonorrhea and syphilis were caused by a single pathogen. Backed by the weight of Hunter's authority, this experiment retarded the development of knowledge regarding the two diseases"—Garrison-Morton. Phillippe Ricord's Traité Pratique des Maladies Vénériennes (Paris, 1838) records a repetition of Hunter's experiment which proved that the two diseases were different (No. 12—RC 201 .R55).

Paul Ehrlich and Sahachiro Hata, in Die experimentelle Chemotherapie der Spirillosen (Berlin, 1910), after many experiments in the action of synthetic drugs upon spirochetal diseases, announced the discovery of salvarsan ("606"), specific in the treatment of syphilis and yaws (No. 13—RC 112 .E33 E96 1910).


14.

SIR THOMAS ELYOT. The Castel of Helthe. [London], 1539.

Bound with:

Regimen Sanitatis Salerni. This boke teachinge all people to governe them in helthe ... . [Text verses in Latin. Commentary by Arnaldus de Villa Nova, translated into English by Thomas Paynell.] [London, 1535.]

4to, old blind-tooled calf, rebacked.

Lilly Library call number: RA 775 .E5 vault

The earliest edition of The Castel of Helthe extent, no copy of a putative 1534 edition every having been located. The STC locates only the British Museum copy of the present edition.

Elyot was one of the most learned Englishmen of the time of Henry VIII. The book is a medical treatise on various ailments, and the author gives an account of the disorders from which he himself suffered. It remained popular until the end of the sixteenth century, but the fact that it was written in English by one who was not a doctor aroused much wrath on the part of the medical profession. Perhaps that is why it is not in Garrison or many other standard histories of medicine to this day.

The Regimen is present in the third printing of Paynell's translation and again the STC locates only the British Museum copy. Of the first edition only one copy is recorded; of the second, three. This famous medieval Latin poem of rhymed medical advice is the most interesting medical work associated with the School of Salerno. In this first English translation only the commentary was translated; the first published English version of the verses was by Sir John Harington, London, 1607.


15.

ANDREAS VESALIUS. De Humani corporis fabrica Libri septem. Basel, [1543].

Folio, contemporary blind-stamped vellum, with brass clasps. Size 42 x 28 cm. With inserted double leaf in signature m; this double leaf and m 3 in on stubs.

Lilly Library call number: QM 25 .V5 1543

"By this epoch-making work Vesalius, the 'Father of Modern Anatomy,' prepared the way for the rebirth of physiology by Harvey. More important still, he undermined the widespread reverence for authority in science and prepared the way for independent observation in anatomy and clinical science. The publication of this work was the greatest event in medical history since the work of Galen. It ranks second only to Harvey's De motu cordis in importance"—Garrison-Morton, 375.

Fulton, a great admirer of Vesalius, reminds us, however, that "as a book, the Fabrica has probably been more admired and less read than any publication of equal significance in the history of science." He also comments that the edition must have been very large as he had records of 33 copies in America alone. Cushing records that he had "for several years kept measurements of the better known copies" and lists only three larger copies than the present, the largest being 43.4 x 29.2 cm.

The ANDREAS VESALIUS. De Humani corporis fabrica Libri septem. second edition (Basel, 1555) is also present (No. 16—QM 25 .V5 1555). According to Garrison, it is "much the better worth having ... the beautiful typography of Oporinus appears in enlarged font, the faulty pagination and index of 1543 are corrected and improved, the text is improved and more scientific." Fulton states, however, that the alterations were comparatively unimportant, though conceding that the second edition is a "still more sumptuous volume than that issued in 1543" and concluding that "the printer's termagant wife could scarcely have favored it."

The Lilly copy is in contemporary vellum, with brass clasps, and the binding is dated 1570. This beautiful copy measures 41.5 x 27.5 cm., .5 cm. each way under the 1543 copy; together, they make a gorgeous pair. Signature X is in three leaves as in Cushing, the double leaf inserted on a stub and X 3, with figures to be superimposed, intact.

The first edition published in England (No. 17—QM 25 .G32 1545) is entitled Compendiosa totius Anatomie delineatio aere exarata: per Thomam Geminum (London, 1545). It consists of 45 leaves of text and 40 plates and was completely unauthorized. Geminus had the woodcuts of Vesalius engraved on copper for this work, which is a splendid production and further distinguished as one of the first English books to contain copperplates. It is a much rarer book than either of the Basel editions and the Lilly copy is a fine one in contemporary blind-rolled binding, probably of English origin.


18.

GIROLAMO FRACASTORO. De Sympathia et Antipathia Rerum Liber unus. De Contagione et Contagiosis Morbis et Curatione Libri III. Venice, 1546.

4to, full vellum.

Lilly Library call number: RC 111 .F8

This book represents a landmark in the development of our knowledge of infectious diseases, the author anticipating the germ theory of disease. "De contagione ... contains three contributions of the first importance. A clear statement of the problems of contagion and infection, a recognition of typhoid fever, and a remarkable pronouncement on the contagiousness of phthisis." The quotation is from Osler's Alabama Student.


PHARMACOPOEIAS Nos. 19-26

19.

El Ricettario dell' Arte, et Universita de Medici, et Spetiali della Citta di Firenze. Florence, 1550.

Folio, vellum, entirely uncut, with the blank leaf O 4 and the errata leaf S 2. The two final leaves carry a fine woodcut of the Virgin (S 3) and a cut of the Medici arms (S 4) repeated from the title page.

Lilly Library call number: RS 141.Y6 F6

The Florentine Pharmacopoeia, the first European work of its kind, was compiled by order of the Duke of Florence and exhibits a very high standard of pharmaceutical knowledge. It became official in 1573 for the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and later for other Italian states.

Of the first edition of 1498, which was legal only for the city-state of Florence, two copies have survived (British Museum, Bibl. Naz. Rome).


20.

Pharmacopoeia Londinensis: or the London Dispensatory ... By Nich. Culpeper Gent. Student in Physick and Astrology; living in Spittle-fields neer London. London, 1653.

Folio, contemporary calf; frontispiece portrait of the author.

Lilly Library call number: RS 151.3 .C85 1653

The first edition under this title of Culpeper's unauthorized translation of the College of Physicians' Pharmacopoeia of 1618. It was first printed in 1649 with the title "A Physicall Directory." The medical fraternity did not approve and, doubtless by their inspiration, it was referred to in a public print as "done (very filthily) into English [by one who] by two yeeres of drunken labour hath Gallimawfred the apothecaries book into nonsense ... And (to supply his drunkenness and leachery with a thirty shilling reward) endeavoured to bring into obloquy the famous societies of apothecaries and chyrurgeons" —DNB. The work was enormously successful, five editions appearing before 1698; it was reissued as late as 1809.

The Lilly Library also has the first London Pharmacopoeia done on purely scientific principles (No. 21—RS 141.3 .R88 1746), compiled for the Royal College of Physicians by William Heberden (London, 1746). All its predecessors, according to Garrison, "were disfigured by the retention of the usual vile and unsavoury ingredients, which were not thrown out until William Heberden made an onslaught on these superstitions."


22.

Pharmacopoe[ia] simpliciorum et efficaciorum ... . [Compiled by William Brown.] Philadelphia, 1778. Evans 15750.

16mo, disbound. Faulty impression affects the title, as above.

Lilly Library call number: RS 141.2 .B8 vault

The first pharmacopoeia to be published in America, famous as the "Lititz Pharmacopoeia," the name deriving from the town from which it was distributed, a communistic village founded by Moravians in 1756 in what is now Lancaster County, Pa. It is printed entirely in Latin and runs to only 32 pages. It was compiled for the use of the Continental Army by the Physician General of the Middle Department and, according to the title page, was adapted to the needs and resources of the military service during the darkest days of the Revolution. Seven copies are recorded, four in Philadelphia libraries.

Other American pharmaceutical works in the Lilly Library include The Pharmacopoeia of the Massachusetts Medical Society (Boston, 1808, in original boards with paper label, RS 141.2 .M3) , and The Pharmacopoeia of the United States of America (Boston, 1820, RS 141.2 .P5 1820), the first state and national issues respectively (Nos. 23 and 24). Jacob Bigelow played an important part in preparing the latter and published a sequel to it (No. 25—RS 153 .B5), A Treatise on the Materia Medica (Boston, 1822) . He departed from continental usage by insisting upon the utmost simplicity in nomenclature. The original U.S. Pharmacopoeia was founded in 1820 at a privately organized convention in the Capitol at Washington, D.C. It is interesting to note that it is still prepared by physicians, pharmacists, and related specialists as a privately organized service, under government authorization.

A related work of special Indiana interest is Botany in Pharmacy (binding title), compiled by John S. Wright of the Eli Lilly Company and published at Indianapolis in 1893 (No. 26—QK 99 .W9). The Lilly copy of this small oblong 8vo volume is in the original printed wrappers, stabbed and corded, with the original envelope. According to Mr. Wright, Bruce Rogers designed the hand-lettered title, an initial, the scrolls for the illustrations, and the tailpiece. This was the first book decorated by Rogers, a Hoosier by birth, and was done while working at his first job for the Indiana Illustrating Company. Only three copies are recorded.


EMBRYOLOGY, OBSTETRICS, AND GYNECOLOGY Nos. 27-38

27.

JACOB RUEFF. De Conceptu et Generatione Hominis. Zürich, 1554.

4to, vellum, with ties.

Lilly Library call number: RG 91 .R9 vault

The importance of this work by Rueff lies largely in its illustrations, which are of interest to the embryologist since they show contemporary ideas of mammalian embryology, and to obstetricians for the depictions of instruments. For laymen, the most pleasant plate is on the verso of the title page, showing the lying-in room with baby getting his first bath.


28.

JACOB RUEFF. The Expert Midwife, or An Excellent and most necessary Treatise of the generation and birth of Man. London, 1637.

Small 4to, contemporary calf.

Lilly Library call number: RG 93 .R9 vault

This first English edition of Rueff's work is very rare, the STC locating only the British Museum copy and Bishop one other in the College of Physicians, Philadelphia. In fact, however, at least two other copies survive: one in the Hunterian Library at Edinburgh, and the present copy, which is a Hunterian duplicate.

Other important works on these subjects in the Lilly collection include William Harvey's Exercitationes de Generatione Animalium (London, 1651); a fine copy, with the portrait (No. 29—QL 955 .H34 vault). The chapter on labor ("De partu") in this book is the first original work on the subject by an Englishman. Walter Needham's Disquisitio Anatomica De Formato Foetu (London, 1667), dedicated to Robert Boyle, records chemical experiments on developing mammalian embryos, and contains instructions for their dissection (No. 30—QL 955 .N4). Wing records only one other copy in America (Chicago). François Mauriceau's Des Maladies des Femmes Grosses et accouchées (Paris, 1668), with the author's portrait on the engraved title page, is illustrated with exquisite copperplates (No. 31—RG 93 .M45). He introduced the practice of delivering his patients in bed instead of in the obstetrical chair, and in this book first refers to many problems of pregnancy and labor. He also gives an account of his adventure with the celebrated Hugh Chamberlen, of the Huguenot clan which succeeded in keeping their invention of an obstetric forceps a family secret for nearly two hundred years. Another seventeenth-century work of major importance is Regner de Graaf's De Mulierum Organis generationi inservientibus Tractatus Novus (Leyden, 1672), illustrated with 27 plates engraved by H. Bary (No. 32—QM 421 .G7). "De Graaf demonstrated ovulation anatomically, pathologically, and experimentally. In the above work he included the first account of the structures afterwards named [by Haller] 'Graafian follicles' "—Garrison.

William Smellie's A Sett of Anatomical Tables, with ... an Abridgment of the Practice of Midwifery (London, 1754) is a famous atlas, folio, with 39 magnificent life-size plates with explanatory text (No. 33—RG 93 .S56). It is a very rare book; the British Museum has no copy and a facsimile edition had to be made from the second edition. Smellie was the teacher of William Hunter, whose Anatomia Uteri Humani Gravidi tabulis illustrata, a folio containing 34 plates, is one of the finest such atlases ever produced (No. 34—RG 520 .H9). "Anatomically correct and artistically perfect," it was printed at the famous Baskerville Press (Birmingham, 1774). The letter press is in both Latin and English. Franz Karl Naegele's Das Weibliche Becken (Carlsruhe, 1825), 4to, with three lithographic plates, is the most important work of this Swiss scientist (No. 35—RG 519 .N32). He later described the obliquely contracted female pelvis.

The Lilly collection also contains the original publication (New England Quarterly Journal of Medicine and Surgery, Boston, 1 April 1843) of Oliver Wendell Holmes' The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever (No. 36—RG 811 .H6) , which roused a storm of criticism among American obstetricians. In 1855 he reprinted it with 24 additional pages and a revised title. He was able to write in The Professor at the Breakfast-Table in 1860: "The sneers of those whose position I had assailed ... I ... have at last demolished, so that nothing but the ghosts of dead women stir among its ruins." The articulate Holmes did not, however, discover the cause of the matter; the inarticulate Semmelweis did and was persecuted and died insane for his pains. It is one of medicine's ironies that these two men, living at the same time, did not know of each other's work. What a collaboration that would have been! For, as it has been remarked, "If Semmelweis could have written like Oliver Wendell Holmes, he would have conquered Europe in twelve months."


37.

IGNAZ PHILIPP SEMMELWEIS. Die Aetiologie, der Begriff und die Prophylaxis des Kindbettfiebers. Pest, Wien & Leipzig, 1861.

8vo, contemporary boards.

Lilly Library call number: RG 811 .S36 vault

An epoch-making book by "one of medicine's martyrs, and one of its far-shining names." He was the man of whom the renowned Lister was to say, "To this great son of Hungary medicine owes most. Without Semmelweis I would be nothing."

Concerned with the tragic prevalence of puerperal fever in his Vienna hospital—four out of every ten women who entered the lying-in ward died of it—he eventually diagnosed it as a septicoemia caused by vaginal examinations made with unclean hands. He recommended "brushing-up" with chloride of lime which is the basis of aseptic—incorrectly often called antiseptic—practice.

He was fiercely opposed by his reactionary colleagues who were blinded by jealousy and vanity. At the height of the controversy he struck back with three pamphlets, among the rarest items in nineteenth-century medicine; the Lilly Library has two of them. Forced to an asylum in July, 1865, he brought with him a dissection wound on the right hand and died in August, a victim of the very disease he had done so much to conquer. His tragedy is the basis of Morton Thompson's The Cry and the Covenant, in the compiler's opinion the finest medical novel ever written.


38.

J. MARION SIMS. Clinical Notes on Uterine Surgery with special reference to the Management of the Sterile Condition. New York, 1866.

First American edition, 8vo, cloth. English publication was in London, the same year.

Lilly Library call number: RG 104 .S6

Sims, born in South Carolina, became surgeon in the newly founded Women's Hospital, New York, 1855. When war broke out, his strong southern sympathies led him to go abroad. As he relates in the Preface, "In 1862 I voluntarily left my own country, on account of its political troubles. [This work] is simply a voice from the Women's Hospital, which, in all probability, would never have been heard if I had remained at home."

The book was a potent factor in the formation of the nascent specialty of gynecology. After the war Sims returned to America to resume a brilliant career and in 1876 was president of the American Medical Society.


39.

GABRIELE FALLOPPIO. Observationes Anatomicae. Venice, 1561.

12mo, old vellum, with the leaf of errata, and the colophon leaf at the end.

Lilly Library call number: QM 421 .F2

This is the principal publication of Falloppio, a pupil of Vesalius (and by many contemporaries considered a more worthy successor) and one of the most distinguished anatomists of his time. "Falloppio is best remembered for his account of the tubes named after him. He also left excellent descriptions of the ovaries ... and round ligaments. He gave to the vagina and the placenta their present scientific names, and definitely proved the existence of the seminal vesicles"—Garrison-Morton.


HERNIA Nos. 40, 41

40.

PIERRE FRANCO. Traité des Hernies ... . Lyon, 1561.

8vo, contemporary limp vellum; from the library of the Jesuit College at Paris. 25 full-page woodcuts of skeletons and surgical instruments.

Lilly Library call number: RD 621 .F8 vault

"The great Provencal surgeon, Pierre Franco, a Huguenot driven by the Waldensian massacres into Switzerland, did even more than Paré to put the operations for hernia, stone, and cataract upon a definite and dignified basis, and was the first to perform supra-pubic cystotomy"—Garrison. The plates reproduce skeletons from Vesalius' Tabulae of 1538, in reduced size.

The earliest important study of hernia in English is:


41.

PERCIVAL POTT. A Treatise on Ruptures. London, 1756.

8vo, later wrappers.

Lilly Library call number: RD 621 .P6

Through a fall in the street, Pott sustained the particular fracture of the fibula to which his name has been given. He took up authorship while confined to his bed, the first fruits being the above treatise on hernia. Referring to it as "his classical book," Garrison-Morton continues: "He refuted many of the old theories concerning its (hernia's) causation and methods of treatment based on these theories. The book includes the first description of congenital hernia."


42.

NICOLAS DE MONARDES. Dos Libros, el Una que trata de todas las Cosas ... que sirven al uso de la medicina ... . Seville, 1569.

12mo, original calf, richly gilded, gilt edges, probably bound for presentation.

Lilly Library call number: RS 169 .M5 vault

Long considered the fi