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Frontispiece portrait, 4 leaves, xxxv, 217, pp, 1 leaf ["Monita" on recto]; 21 plates, each with a facing outline plate (the plates are numbered I-XVII, CI, CII, GI, GII). Folio. Original pastepaper boards. Chipped along joints. A few spot stains in upper blank margin of a few leaves. Untrimmed. Near Fine. First Edition. Garrison-Morton 399.1: "Santorini died before the completion of these anatomical plates which he intended to be his chef d'oeuvre. This elegantly printed volume is the only significant medical book printed by the celebrated Giambattista Bodoni for the Duke of Parma." "All the twenty-one prints of the work are done in a light crayon effect which, however, does not impair the anatomic clarity of the prints, but even brings out well the differences in the tissues. Each plate is accompanied by an outline plate which is marked with reference letters. The seventeen plates by Santorini have a ruled margin at the top and on the side, like the Eustachian plates, but have no signatures of the artists. They were drawn by Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, who made the coppers for Tasso's Gierusalemme Liberata. . . . A woman, Florentia Marcella, engraved Santorini's plates under Santorini's personal supervision. . . . The work belongs to the best of its time. . ., not only as regards the dissections and illustrations, but also as to the very elaborate commentary. The pictures deal with facial muscles, the base of the brain and other parts of the brain, the organs of smell and hearing, the pharynx, the breasts, the heart, the diaphragm with the beginning of the thoracic duct, the stomach, the liver, the intestines, the pancreas, the ileocaecal valve. . ., the bladder, the muscles of the perineum, and the genitals. Covoli's pictures represent the breasts, the tunics of the testicle and a six months' foetus" (Choulant, History and Bibliography of Anatomic Illustration, pp. 263-64). "Santorini was generally acknowledged as the outstanding anatomist of his time. Many corrections and discoveries in the detailed anatomy of the different organs of the human body go back to Santorini. Even today a facial muscle (risorius), a pair of cartilages (cornicula) of the larynx, the emissary veins of the skull, and a part of the superior and inferior turbinates of the ethmoid are named after Santorini" (Hagelin, Rare and Important Medical Books in the Library of Swedish Society of Medicine, pp. 112-13). Norman 1888. Heirs of Hippocrates 788. Seller Inventory # 4920
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