Joannis Sculteti Physici Ulmensis olim felicissimi Armamentarium Chirurgicum, Olim auctum Triginta novem Tabulis, tam veteres quam recentiores machines & operationes exhibentibus; Nec non observationum medico-chirurgicarum centuria collecta a Joh. Baptista a Lamzweerde, Ph. & Med. Doct. & observationibus Petri Hadriani F. Verduin, Studio Johannis Tilingii M. D. editis. Nunc vero In meliorem ordinem redactum, ab innumeris mendis expurgatum, & locupletissimo indice provisum studio Johan. Christophori de Sprögel, Med. Doc. & Membri Acad. Nat. Curios. Nymphodorus dicti
FROM THE LIBRARIES OF TWO DISTINGUISHED HEART DOCTORS:
PAUL DUDLEY WHITE & FRANCIS L. CHAMBERLAIN
Amsterdam: Apud Janssonio-Waesbergios, 1741. Revised edition.
Octavo (8 1/8” x 5 1/8”, 206mm x 131mm): *8(–*8) **6 A-Y8 Z4 [$5 signed; –*1]. 193 leaves, pp. [26] (title-page, blank, 3pp. to the reader, 3pp. authors cited, 17pp. index of plates and observation, concordance to earlier editions’ plates), 1-360. With an engraved title-page and 54 engraved plates on their full sheets, folded to be viewed alongside the text.
Bound in contemporary stabbed vellum. On the spine, author in ink manuscript. All edges of the text-block untrimmed.
Filled losses along the lower edges of the boards. Tanned and offset throughout, with some passages of foxing. A totally unsophisticated and intact example. Ticket of Liberia Vincia (Milano, Via Monte Napoleone 23) to the front paste-down. Graphite gift inscription to the recto of the first free end-paper: “Property of Dr Francis/ L Chamberlain – 490 Post St. San/Francisco, Cal./ Gift from Dr Paul D. White”.
Johann Schultes (1595–1645) was demonstrator for and assistant to Adriaan van den Spieghel, who was professor of anatomy at the University of Padua. Graduated from Padua, he returned to Ulm in 1625 as town doctor; there he practiced for twenty years and prepared the manuscript for the Armamentarium chirurgicum (surgical arsenal). The book was brought posthumously to press by his nephew in 1655 as the Χειροπλοθήκη. It benefitted from the elder Schultes’s experience treating battle wounds from the Thirty Years’ War, whose combatants used fire-arms to a much greater degree than had soldiers in previous conflicts.
By 1741, the medical world had moved on considerably. Schultes’s original Armamentum was used as the basis for a great many revisions:[1] new plates, new case-reports by Jan Baptist Lamsweerde and Pieter Adriaanszoon Verduyn and a new index by Johann Christoph Sprögel (member of the Leopoldina, nicknamed “Nymphodorus I”), the whole edited by Johann Tiling. In other words, the volume was substantially revised to reflect the advancements of the intervening 86 years. The plates in particular, originally engraved by Jonas Arnold, show a wide range of tools as well as of procedures; amputations, resections, contraptions for lactation and a great many others. The original condition of the volume — preserving the mostly blank sheets on which the plates were printed — allows the illustration to sit alongside the description within the text.
Paul Dudley White (1886–1973) was a distinguished cardiologist who rose to prominence as President Eisenhower’s physician after his 1955 heart attack. Born from a Mayflower family — his father was a founder of New England Baptist Hospital — White was educated at Boston Latin and Harvard before residency at Massachusetts General Hospital. He was a co-founder of the American Heart Association and served as its president in 1941.
Francis L. Chamberlain (d. 1995) was born in Santa Cruz and was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley and received his medical doctorate from UC San Francisco. He then went east and received a doctorate in medical science from Columbia and was resident at Mass. Gen. — where, presumably, he met Dr. White — before returning to lead the UCSF department of cardiology before entering private practice at 490 Post Street, just a block from Union Square. He, like his mentor, was president of the American Heart Association in 1958-9.
First edition: Garrison-Morton-Norman 3669.1, 5571; Heirs of Hippocrates 466.
[1] Trans.: The surgical arsenal of Johann Schultes, late of most prosperous Ulm, recently expanded with thirty new plates, showing both old and recent tools and operations, and also the medical-surgical collection of observations by Jan Baptist Lamsweerde, physical and medical doctor, and with the observations of Pieter Adriaanszoon Verduyn, diligently edited by Johann Tiling M.D. Now put into better order, purged of countless errors, & diligently provided with an ample index by Johann Christoph Sprögel, M.D. (alias Nymphodorus) and member of the Akademie der Naturforscher.
Item #JLR0503
Price: $5,750