Description
Ambroise Pare’s contributions to surgery were revolutionary.
Extremely rare first edition published during Pare’s lifetime.
Très bel exemplaire dans une fine reliure en maroquin de Chambolle-Duru.
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Paré, Ambroise. La Méthode Curative des Playes, & Fractures de la Teste humaine. Avec les pourtraits des Instrumens nécessaires pour la curation d’icelles.
Paris, Jean Le Royer, 1561.
In-12 de (12) ff., CCLXXVI, (12) ff.
Maroquin rouge, motif doré au centre des plats, dos à nerfs, filet or sur les coupes, roulette intérieure dorée, tranches dorées sur marbrures. Chambolle-Duru.
165 x 100 mm.
Très rare édition originale.
Ambroise Paré fut un pionnier de la méthode moderne d’observation. Sa réputation gagnée sur les champs de bataille lui valut d’être nommé chirurgien auprès de quatre rois de France.
Le traité est inspiré par la mort de Henri II à la suite d’un tournoi. Paré décrit la blessure porté à l’œil par le coup de lance et l’autopsie. Intéressante illustration gravée sur bois: à commencer par l’admirable portrait, dans un médaillon ovale, figurant l’auteur à l’âge de quarante-cinq ans. Parmi les bois dans le texte, certains sont empruntés à Vésale; en revanche ceux représentant les instruments de chirurgie illustrent ses propres inventions. On notera enfin les gravures expliquant sa pratique d’une chirurgie faciale et celles qui décrivent d’ingénieuses prothèses.
Very rare first edition.
Device on title-page, portrait on verso (attributed to Jean Cousin), 74 woodcuts of anatomy and surgical instruments, privilege leaf at end,
Doe 12; B.M. STC, p.337; Durling 3524; Waller 7170; Cushing Coll. p.75; not in Wellcome or Adams.
Some of the anatomical illustrations in this book are copies from Vesalius, but others are new here.
The octavo monographs published by Pare before the collected works first appeared in 1575 are now all extremely rare. The best collection of them which is recorded was made by Dr. Harvey Cushing about fifty to sixty years ago. Though Sir William Osier’s statement that ‘only a few copies of each are known’ is perhaps slightly exaggerated, it is true to say that outside the old medical libraries copies of these books are now hardly ever seen. In the whole range of BAR only two of them are recorded, one in 1917 and another in 1926; another was in the Butler sale of 1911 (not in the Wellcome Library).
None of these was a copy of this work.
Ambroise Pare’s contributions to surgery were revolutionary. The son of an artisan, trained as a barber-surgeon, Pare became a military surgeon and eventually attained the rank of premier chirurgien du roi under Charles IX and Henri II.
Having accidentally discovered, in the heat of the battle of Turin in 1536, that the gentle dressing of gunshot wounds possessed curative powers far superior to the traditional painful technique of cauterization, Pare pursued this unheard-of treatment, experimenting with various dressings, and published his discoveries in 1545 in his first book, La methode de traicter les playes.
Pare continued to develop his empirically based surgical methods, which included the practice of ligaturing blood vessels after amputation to control hemorrhage as well as improvements in obstetrical surgery, and he invented new surgical instruments for his purposes. His innovations won him both the fervent support of his noble clientele and the violent opposition of the medical establishment, culminating in attempts by the Paris Faculty of Medicine to suppress his works, which were particularly widely disseminated because of their use of the vernacular. For a time after Pare’s death his writings continued to circulate throughout Europe, but in France the reactionary pressure of medical academia forced a reversion to the old methods within 50 years. Pare’s discoveries were not to be revived until the abolition of the Faculty of Medicine during the French Revolution.
The present work is a treatise on the treatment of head wounds, written in response to an inquiry following the accidental death in 1559 of Henri II, who was struck in the eye by a lance during a wedding tournament. The first part (L’anatomie de la teste humaine) is devoted to the anatomy of the head and cranial regions and is illustrated with woodcuts after Vesalius. In the second part (La methode de traicter les playes & fractures de la teste) Pare describes his methods of treatment of head wounds, skull fractures, and diseases of the facial organs, illustrating the text with abundant figures of his surgical instruments.
Extremely rare edition published during Pare’s lifetime.
Très bel exemplaire dans une fine reliure en maroquin de Chambolle-Duru.
