Manuscript book of Copied Medical Papers

ca 1756.

UNIQUE 18TH CENTURY LEATHER BOUND VOLUME WITH OVER 500 PAGES OF HAND SCRIPT CONTAINING COPIES OF CONTEMPORARY PUBLISHED MEDICAL PAPERS IN FRENCH AND LATIN.

6 1/2 inches tall hardcover, contemporary full leather binding, spine with raised bands, gilt compartments, faded gilt red leather labels, edges stained red. Light wear to edges of covers and spine, small wormholes margins of covers and top of pages, not affecting text. Pages are consecutively numbered in ink from 1 to 524. Each page is filled with about 25 lines of neat ink script, most in French, some in Latin. The contents represent hand copies of 18th century European medical papers, apparently entered by different scribes.

The first paper is recorded as, " Recherches sur la force de l'imagination de femmes enceinte sur le fœtus a l'occasion d'un chien extraordinaire " par M. Eller, acad. de Berlin tom XII, 1756. [Research on the strength of pregnant women's imagination on the fetus on the exposure to an extraordinary dog]. The title of the original published paper reads " monstruous " rather than " extraordinary ". JOHANN THEODOR ELLER (1689-1760) was a major physician of the 18th century: chemist , Prussian military doctor and from 1735 personal physician under Frederick William I and Frederick II.

This is followed by papers by Meckel, Fothergill, Roderer and Monro. JOHANN FRIEDRICH MECKEL (1781–1833) was a German anatomist born in Halle. He worked as a professor of anatomy, pathology and zoology at the University of Halle, Germany. JOHN FOTHERGILL (1712–1780) was an English physician, plant collector, philanthropist and Quaker. JOHANN GEORG ROEDERER (1726–1763) was a German physician and obstetrician who was a native of Strasbourg. He studied medicine at Leiden, Paris and London, and became the first professor of obstetrics at the University of Göttingen. ALEXANDER MONRO (1697–1767) was the founder of Edinburgh Medical School. To distinguish him as the first of three generations of physicians of the same name, he is known as primus.