Atlas d'ophthalmoscopie médicale et de cérébroscopie montrant chez l'homme et chez les animaux les lésions du nerf optique, de la rétine et de la choroïde produites par les maladies du cerveau, par les maladies de la moelle épinère et par les maladies constitutionelles et humorales. . .
Paris: Librairie J.-B. Baillière et fils, 1876. First edition.
Folio in 4s (14” x 10 5/8”, 356mm x 270mm): π4 1-184 192 [$1 signed]. 78 leaves, pp. i-vii (half-title, list of other works, title, blank, preface, blank, contents) viii, 1 2-148. With 14 chromolithographed plates.
Bound in the publisher’s maroon cloth. Author and title gilt to the front board, publisher’s insignia blind to the rear board. On the spine, author and title gilt. Brown end-papers.
Loss to the tail, with some chips and wear to the extremities. Front hinge starting at the bottom. Foxed, occasionally moderately. Price-code (?) ink manuscript to the upper spine-corner of the title-page along with the ink-stamp of the library of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. Their ink-stamp to the verso of each plate. Leaves 161.2 unopened.
Eugène Bouchut (1818–1891) was, by the age of 31, head of clinic at the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris, the oldest hospital in the city (traditionally given the foundation date of 651). He went on to teach at or to lead various institutions in Paris, eventually chief doctor at the Maisons d’éducation et de la Légion d’honneur — the school founded by Napoleon for female descendants of recipients of the legion of honor, which remains one of the best in France.
Bouchut pioneered imaging the eye (ophthalmoscopy) as well as using the eye as a window onto the brain (cerebroscopy). The fourteen plates in the present volume are illustrated by chromolithography, conveying vividly the appearance of the inside of the eye and the manifestations of disease (meningitis, tuberculosis, encephalitis). The ophthalmoscope — familiar to those who have been to optometrists as a bright light mounted on a handle — was invented in 1851 by Hermann von Helmholtz, and the binocular indirect ophthalmoscope (the contraption into which the patient generally places their chin in order to be fitted for corrective lenses) by Felix Giraud-Teulon in 1861.
International Biography and Bibliography of Ophthalmologists p. 89; Medizin-geschichtliches hilfsbuch p. 38.
Item #JLR0508
Price: $900