Authors starting with K from B & L Rootenberg Rare Books & Manuscripts

With 1 folding engraved plate, woodcut vignette head- and tailpieces. Original speckled boards; minor scuffing to extremities, otherwise an excellent copy with contemporary ownership inscription of V. Stein on title, and small library stamp of Joachim W. Voigt First edition. The doctrine of infarctus had its origin with the Hesse-Homburg physician Johann Kämpf (d.1753) and his son of the same name (1726-87), who published the present "doctrine" of his father's. We won't go into a deta... more information

Contemporary boards, worn; interior generally clean, with light browning on first few leaves and occasional spotting. Originally published in Königsberg in 1790, Kant asserts in this work that the problems of biology cannot be explained by mechanical causes alone. “All the phenomena of inanimate nature can be explained in terms of the motion of matter in space and enduring through time, while for living things such efficient [i.e., mechanical] causes are not enough -- they must be explained in ter... more information

With 84 text illustrations. Original cloth, head and foot of spine a bit worn. First English edition of this classical work, regarded as one of the most comprehensive and important publications on dermatology. The author describes some of the rarest forms of skin diseases such as xeroderma pigmentosum, dermatitis papillaris capillitii, and of course, the varicelliform eruption and the hemorrhagic sarcoma that is associated with his name. G&M, 3995.... more information

Separate titles in red and black, each with engraved allegorical frontispiece. Modern half-morocco over marbled boards, browning throughout. Sammelband of three highly regarded works by Keil, professor of medicine and philosophy in Bavaria. The anatomical treatise describes the human body, with special attention directed to the arteries, muscles, birth-cycle and neurological system. The book on surgical methods and procedures is mainly concerned with wounds and their treatment.... more information

With 12 folding plates. Engraved title vignette. Contemporary calf; some light browning and foxing. Ownership inscription on first fly-leaf. Sixth edition (first published in 1701) of Keill’s lecture notes on Newtonian mechanics. Also included is a chapter in support of Huygens’ approximation of the quadrature, in which he located the center of gravity of a segment of a circle. Keill (1671-1721), a famous mathematician and astronomer, was a friend and early champion of Isaac Newton and his Princip... more information

Black publisher’s cloth in original dust-jacket. Aside from some small spots to back of dust-jacket, a bright, clean copy. First edition of this posthumously printed work. Contains many of his more famous tales, such as The thing in the cellar and The dead woman, as well as many previously uncollected works. ... more information

Original peach publisher’s cloth, title in gilt to spine. Very fine, in original dust-jacket. First edition of this collection of stories. Divided into three sections, the first made up of science-fictions stories, the second of “weird fiction” and the third consisting of tales inspired by Keller’s psychiatric practice.... more information

Green publisher’s cloth, in original dust-jacket. A fine copy. First edition of this bizarre tale of a male virgin birth. Wishing to convey the idea that “a man can do anything he wants to if he thinks he can and is willing to make the effort,” Keller has written a strange tale about a man who repeats Paracelsus’ experiment of masculine parthagenesis.... more information

with 2 plates. A fine copy in the original dust-jacket. Inscribed by author to fly-leaf. First edition. The tale of a group of men condemned to death by being thrown into a volcano, The solitary hunters originally appeared in Weird Tales magazine, and this is its first appearance in book form. The Abyss is a fascinating tale about a large-scale scientific/psychological experiment.... more information

Original green publisher’s cloth in original dust jacket. Signed by the author on fly-leaf. First American edition of this collection of tales of Louisiana. Originally printed in France, this edition contains a new after-word by the author. This is one of 250 copies inscribed by Keller.... more information

With frontispiece. Black publisher’s cloth, title in gilt to spine. Very fine in original dust-jacket. Inscribed by the author. Complete with booklet bibliography of Keller’s work which was issued with this volume. First edition. “Collected under one cover for the first time is a representative cross-section of the works of David H. Keller, M.D.” The title story, Life everlasting is the strange fable of a society which chooses fertility over immortality... more information

Engraved allegorical titles to each work and a general title with engraved vignette by Abraham Bloteling (1640-90). With 9 folding engraved plates and 30 text engravings. Contemporary calf, rebacked at an early date with original backstrip laid down. Contemporary manuscript. First edition. The author's noteworthy discoveries in anatomy and fetal bone development are here recorded in 100 cases. The work also contains anatomical discoveries which have immortalized Kerckring's name. G&M, 383.... more information

Title in red and black with 4 large woodcut instruments (2 are repeated in text). Large double-page woodcut wound-man, smaller woodcut of a zodiac man, and 2 large text woodcuts; last leaf with printer's device. Old German paste-boards; some interior soiling, still a beautiful copy. Early edition of this rare surgical treatise, a cornerstone in the history of medicine. The initial sections on surgical practices and treatments are nearly identical with the corresponding portion of the author's Fascic... more information

Cloth-backed marbles boards, title in gilt to spine; a fine uncut copy. First edition of this collection of short essays, some literary, some professional. Titles include An introduction to medical ethics and Consider child, what is the use? This copy is number 103 of only 300 copies printed under the direction of T.M. Cleland (1880-1964), one of the leading American graphic artists of the 1920’s at the private press of A. Colish. The American fine printer and publisher Abraham Colish (1882-1963) star... more information

With folding aquatint frontispiece and 10 plates (some with multiple figures). Contemporary half calf over marbled boards, covers worn, joints cracked; interior very nice. Armorial bookplate with initials EDS on paste-down. First edition of the botanical work inspired by White's The Natural History of Selborne. Knapp roamed the English countryside with a keen eye for its plants, both common and rare, as well as the birds, insects, and animals abounding among them. Though he concentrates mainly on plan... more information

Half-vellum over marbled boards, gilt-ornamented spine, marbled endpapers. Covers worn; uncut. ... more information

With 4 folding plates in first work and 5 in second work (4 folding). Original front wrappers; both disbound. Signature of former owner. Original offprints of a two-part essay on the central nervous system by a lauded nineteenth-century neurologist. The first part covers the cerebellum, the second part the spinal chord. K lliker (1817-1905), one of the leading biologists of the nineteenth century, was the first to recognize the cellular structure of tissue. He was author of the first book on comparative em... more information

Original printed back wrapper; front wrapper in facsimile (from the copy owned by Princeton University, with Überreicht vom Verfasser printed on top); small stain (from tape?) on bottom corner of first page. Preserved in a full morocco clamshell case. First edition of the first printing of Gödel's Proof, the single most celebrated result in mathematical logic. This paper, On Formally Undecidable Propositions (Incompleteness Theorem) is of legendary rarity. We were only able to locate one copy... more information