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Franco (Pierre) Petit traité, contenant une des

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Franco (Pierre) Petit traité, contenant une des parties principales de chirurgie, laquelle les chirurgiens hernieres exercent, ainsi quil montre en la page suivante, first edition, collation: A-I8 (G³ mislabelled H³), woodcut illustrations, manuscript date to title, title holed and repaired, very slightly affecting woodcut device, contemporary ink ownership names to front free endpaper and title, second neatly crossed out, corner torn from G² just touching text, small modern biro mark to rear pastedown, contemporary limp vellum, lightly marked, spine discoloured with tiny hole, still overall a very clean and fresh copy, 8vo (160 x 103mm), housed in custom morocco box, Lyon, Antoine Vincent, [1556].

⁂ Pierre Franco, creator of the suprapubic lithotomy cataract operation and the surgical repair of hernia, is considered to be one of the greatest surgeons of the Renaissance and a forerunner of urology. This work is absent from many major medical collections which regard the expanded second edition of 1561 as the first, yet this edition includes the first recorded description of an operation for strangulated hernia, and so marks itself as a milestone in Renaissance surgical practice. Franco was hugely influential by lauding open operations, and wanted to return them to the realm of regular surgical practice, rather than allowing itinerant practitioners known as 'inciseurs' or 'cutters' to attempt untrained procedures. The treatment of cleft lips amounts to four chapters, in which he recommends that after two days the eschar must be loosened with fresh butter before suturing. Franco also describes in minute detail the technique of radical operation for inguinal hernia. Like all who preceded him after the time of Celsus (except William of Salicet), he would remove the testicle as part of the usual procedure. Yet for patients with one testis he later devised an operation in which the organ was spared, and this life-saving procedure became part of the surgical armamentarium.

Though a contemporary of Ambroise Paré, Franco is often neglected from the medical history canon, yet Paré's first book, his Dix Livres de Chirurgie, 1564, plagiarises much of Franco's work on lithotomy and cystostomy, which Paré only later acknowledged in 1575. No other copies listed on ABPC/RBH, and we know of no other copy having appeared in commerce. OCLC list copies in US at Chicago, Harvard, Mayo Clinic, Minnesota and NLM.

Provenace: signature of F. Athenosiis on title and P. Guisonii to endpaper, from the library of Jean Blondelet.

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Franco (Pierre) Petit traité, contenant une des parties principales de chirurgie, laquelle les chirurgiens hernieres exercent, ainsi quil montre en la page suivante, first edition, collation: A-I8 (G³ mislabelled H³), woodcut illustrations, manuscript date to title, title holed and repaired, very slightly affecting woodcut device, contemporary ink ownership names to front free endpaper and title, second neatly crossed out, corner torn from G² just touching text, small modern biro mark to rear pastedown, contemporary limp vellum, lightly marked, spine discoloured with tiny hole, still overall a very clean and fresh copy, 8vo (160 x 103mm), housed in custom morocco box, Lyon, Antoine Vincent, [1556].

⁂ Pierre Franco, creator of the suprapubic lithotomy cataract operation and the surgical repair of hernia, is considered to be one of the greatest surgeons of the Renaissance and a forerunner of urology. This work is absent from many major medical collections which regard the expanded second edition of 1561 as the first, yet this edition includes the first recorded description of an operation for strangulated hernia, and so marks itself as a milestone in Renaissance surgical practice. Franco was hugely influential by lauding open operations, and wanted to return them to the realm of regular surgical practice, rather than allowing itinerant practitioners known as 'inciseurs' or 'cutters' to attempt untrained procedures. The treatment of cleft lips amounts to four chapters, in which he recommends that after two days the eschar must be loosened with fresh butter before suturing. Franco also describes in minute detail the technique of radical operation for inguinal hernia. Like all who preceded him after the time of Celsus (except William of Salicet), he would remove the testicle as part of the usual procedure. Yet for patients with one testis he later devised an operation in which the organ was spared, and this life-saving procedure became part of the surgical armamentarium.

Though a contemporary of Ambroise Paré, Franco is often neglected from the medical history canon, yet Paré's first book, his Dix Livres de Chirurgie, 1564, plagiarises much of Franco's work on lithotomy and cystostomy, which Paré only later acknowledged in 1575. No other copies listed on ABPC/RBH, and we know of no other copy having appeared in commerce. OCLC list copies in US at Chicago, Harvard, Mayo Clinic, Minnesota and NLM.

Provenace: signature of F. Athenosiis on title and P. Guisonii to endpaper, from the library of Jean Blondelet.

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Sale price
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Time, Location
27 May 2021
UK, London
Auction House
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