René Descartes. Tractatus de Homine, et de Formatione Foetus. Amstelodami: Elseverium, 1677. First Elzevier edit...

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René Descartes. Tractatus de Homine, et de Formatione Foetus. Quorum prior Notis perpetuis Lucovici de la Forge, M. D. illustratur. Amstelodami: apud Danielem Elseverium, 1677. First Elzevier edition in Latin.

Small quarto. Approximately 7.75 x 6 inches. [76, Praefatio and Index], 239 pages. Illustrated with forty-eight intertextual engravings. Near contemporary full brown calf, covers ruled and paneled in black. Rebacked in brown morocco, preserving the gilt-stamped title and date labels (some loss to date label). Binding worn, with loss at corners, hinges cracking (yet solid), some intermittent dampstaining in text (heaviest at the first few leaves), with small ink notation and large later gift inscription on front free endpaper, and with the bookplate of Margaret and William Bloom on the front pastedown (William Bloom had written the gift inscription). Overall, very good. This edition was translated into Latin by Claude Clerselier, who also had edited the first French translation, both of which are considered superior to the first Latin translation by Schuyl.

"Descartes considered the human body a material machine, directed by a rational soul located in the pineal body. This book was the first attempt to cover the whole field of 'animal physiology.' The work is really a physiological appendix to his Discourse on method, 1637. The first edition was translated from the French." (Garrison and Morton). "[The] first French edition [1664] is the original text as composed by Descartes and edited by his good friend, Claude Clerselier. This edition also contains the first printing of his treatise De la formation du foetus, completed just before his death. The fine woodcuts in this edition were partly based on Descartes' drawings from the manuscript and partly prepared by the co-editors, Louis de la Forge and Gérard van Gutschoven." (Heirs of Hippocrates).

BM Readex, VII, p. 134. Copinger 1373. Garrison and Morton 574. Heirs of Hippocrates 469. Wellcome II, p. 453.